How to Enable Amazon’s New Concise Mode for Alexa
Amazon’s digital assistant is chatty, and we don’t blame you if you’re tired of hearing HAL 9000-style “OK” every time you ask her to do something on your behalf. Fortunately, the Alexa caretaker is currently testing a new “short mode” that allows your Echo devices to respond with softer beeps instead of larger acknowledgments. Here’s how to set it up if you have access to it.
If you’re lucky, Alexa will tell you what she has to say. Assuming you’re in Amazon’s “short mode” test group, the next few times you ask her to do something on your behalf, she might tell you that she will switch to sweet tones instead of saying “OK.” response. TA-dah! Short mode.
And if you don’t like the new responses of your Echo device …
How to turn on and off short mode manually
First, you must be in the super-cool bunch of Amazon folks getting the early rollout of Concise Mode. But just because Alexa didn’t switch the setting for you doesn’t mean you can’t do it yourself. To check if you are eligible for Short Mode, open the Alexa app on your iOS or Android device.
From there, click on the hamburger icon and then click on Settings. Scroll down to the very bottom of the settings screen. If you only see “About the Alexa App” under the “General” heading, you’re out of luck. If you see an option for Alexa Voice Responses, tap on it and you’ll see an option to turn on Short Mode.
There is still no way to completely mute Alexa’s responses to your commands, other than lowering the volume of your Echo device to the lowest level so it’s harder to hear them.