How to make Alexa lower her voice to a whisper

If you’re leery about chatting with Alexa late at night because her blaring replies might wake the whole house, you can turn on a setting that’ll lower Alexa’s voice to a whisper.

Once you switch on Alexa’s Whisper Mode, Alexa will whisper to you if you whisper to her first.

It’s a nifty trick, and one that apparently required a fair amount of research and technical expertise to pull off. The bottom line, though, is that Whisper Mode makes for an effective way to chat with Alexa on the down-low.

It’s worth noting that Whisper Mode only works on Echo speakers, such as the Echo and Echo Dot. If you try to whisper to Alexa using, say, the Alexa app for Android or iOS, Alexa will talk back to you in her normal voice.

How to turn on Alexa’s Whisper Mode

1. Open the Alexa mobile app on your iOS or Android device.
2. Tap the menu button, then tap Settings > Voice Responses.
3. Toggle on the Whisper Mode setting.
4. You can always ask Alexa to “Turn off Whisper Mode,” or simply disable the setting in the Alexa app.

Now, here’s an annoying thing about Alexa’s Whisper Mode: while the setting will apply to all the Echo speakers signed into your Amazon account, you’ll essentially need to prime it for each speaker before Alexa starts recognizing your whispers automatically.

That’s because the first time you whisper to a given Echo speaker, Alexa will say in her normal voice, “I think you just whispered to me,” and then she’ll continue to explain what Whisper Mode is before finally lowering her voice.

Once that’s done, however, Alexa should correctly respond to your whispers on the first try, as well as go back to speaking normally when you talk to her in a normal voice.