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How to turn on the Alexa Whisper Mode

If your Echo smart speaker is a bit too shouty for you, you can temper the responses with Alexa Whisper Mode, which has the voice assistant respond calmly and quietly

Ever decided to speak to Alexa at night and been given a full blast voice response, shattering the quiet and waking everyone up? You’re in the right place, as we’ll show you how to turn on the Alexa Whisper Mode, also known as Alexa Whispered Responses.

When enabled, if you whisper to Alexa, it will respond in a whispered tone back to. It’s a touch frightening and first, and makes the personal assistant sound a bit like a serial killer but, hey, at least you won’t bother anyone else.

There are two ways to manage the setting, and we’ll run through both below.

Option 1: Ask Alexa to turn on Whisper Mode

You can just ask Alexa to turn on Whispered Responses. Just say to any Echo speaker in your house, “Alexa, turn on whisper mode.” You’ll get a voice reply that confirms that you’ve turned on the mode.

If you want to disable it, just say, “Alexa, turn off whisper mode.” You’ll get a voice reply telling you that the mode has been disabled.

Related: Amazon Alexa Guide

Option 2: Use the app

If you prefer, you can turn on Whisper Mode using the app. Open the Alexa app on your phone, tap the menu button and select Settings. Tap Voice Responses under Alexa Preferences, and then you can use the toggle switch to turn on Whispered Responses.

In the app, the settings say that this only applies to devices set to English (United States). However, even though the app says this, our devices are set to UK English, and the mode works anyway.

Oddly, when we first went to the setting, the toggle was turned off, even though we’d enabled the mode using the voice command just before. If you have any problems, we recommend using the voice option to toggle Whisper Mode on and off.

Amazon Alexa Whisper Mode app setting

How to use Alexa Whisper Mode

When you’ve got Whisper Mode enabled, using it is easy: just whisper your command to Alexa, and it will respond in a whispered tone to anything that you say. Be careful, as if you have Follow Up mode turned on, which lets Alexa wait to hear a new command, speaking in a normal tone will have Alexa blare out a response.

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