To give an instruction to your Amazon voice assistant, you must activate his listening mode by saying “Alexa”. At that moment, its circle of light will turn blue, indicating that the device is now listening to your instructions.
In this guide a vertical bar between words means OR to show you that there are several word choice options to execute the same command.
For example, if you want to stop a music playing on your device, you can say: Alexa, stop or Alexa, pause.
This will be represented by a vertical bar between the two words. You can choose the one you want:
Alexa, stop | pause
Here is a list of basic voice commands that will be useful no matter what Alexa is doing.
Request for assistance
When you don’t know what your options are, ask Alexa for help.
Alexa, help
Alexa, what can I say?
Stop an action
If you are listening to some music, information or are in a middle of an application (skill), you can terminate or pause the current operation and enjoy the silence with the following instructions.
Alexa, pause | stop | shut up
Resume an action
If you don’t wait too long after you ended the music, Alexa gives you the option to resume it right where you stopped it.
Alexa, continue | resume
Volume adjustment
Volume adjustment by level
You can ask Alexa to set herself on a volume level between 0 and 10. Level 1 being the lowest and 10 the highest. Alexa will indicate with her circle of white light the level at which she is set. A semi-circle corresponds to a volume of 5 or 50%.
Alexa, volume [0 to 10] [location]
To set the volume to 4 or 40% on another of your an Alexa device called “John”, you will say:
Alexa, volume [4] on [Kitchen]
Volume +
To increase the volume by one level or +10%.
Alexa, volume up [location]
Alexa, increase the volume
Alexa, louder
Alexa, higher
Alexa, turn it up
Volume –
To lower the volume by one level or -10%.
Alexa, volume down [location]
Alexa, softer
Alexa, decrease the volume
Alexa, lower
Alexa, turn it down
To
Alexa, volume down [in the office]
Mute
To mute the sound while playback continues. This corresponds to a volume of level 0.
Alexa, mute
Unmute
When you turn off the mute mode, the volume returns to the level it was previously set to.
Alexa, unmute | resume
