How to . . . get your smart speaker to quieten down

For some, smart speakers are an indispensable addition to the household. But there are times when you would prefer that it was little less vocal. At night, or if you don’t want to be disturbed, it would be nice if Alexa or Google could read the room and keep it down without you having to manually turn down the volume.

The good news is that both companies give you the option to do just that.

For Amazon the feature is called Whisper Mode. To set it up for your devices, go to the Alexa app on your Android or iPhone. Select More in the bottom right of the screen, and go to Settings. Under Alexa preferences, choose voice responses and enable Whisper mode.

Alarms

To get your Alexa devices to whisper to you, simply whisper your command or query to your Echo device. Alexa will recognise your low tone and respond accordingly.

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For Google Home and Nest devices, you'll need to enable Night Mode for each device. Open the Google Home app, select your device, and go to Settings. Scroll down to Notifications and Digital Wellbeing.

Tap on Night Mode and enable it. You can set specific times for the quiet mode to be enabled, and you can also ask Google to switch on Do Not Disturb during that period, so you won’t be hit with notifications at 3am, but will still get alarms and timers.