This hidden Alexa feature means you’ll never have to shout at your Echo Show again

Voice controls are one of my favourite smart home features, especially when I’m using my smart speaker. But for those who don’t want to shout ‘Alexa’ constantly at their Echo Show devices, or if you’re trying not to disturb other people in your home, there’s a quick and easy way to access Alexa without having to shout at her.

For those who own an Echo Show smart display, Tap to Alexa is a handy yet underrated feature that saves your voice and makes common requests and actions more seamless. Rather than shout ‘Alexa’, you can enable Tap to Alexa so you can type commands and see your frequently used requests by tapping on the screen.

The Tap to Alexa feature is great for a number of reasons. Maybe you’ve got guests or children sleeping in your home so you don’t want to wake them by shouting for Alexa. Tap to Alexa also gives you more accessible control for people with speech, hearing or mobility issues.

To activate Tap to Alexa on your Echo Show, all you have to do is go to Settings on your Echo Show’s screen. From there, select Accessibility and there should be an option for Tap to Alexa. Once it’s been activated, you should be able to see a finger icon on your Echo Show’s screen.

When you touch the finger icon, your Tap to Alexa dashboard will come up and give you multiple options, like checking the weather, setting timers and playing music. Essentially, anything you ask Alexa to do regularly should come up when you use Tap to Alexa.

But my favourite part of the Tap to Alexa feature is its customisable tiles. On the dashboard, you can create your own customised buttons for your frequent commands which is especially useful for controlling your smart home gadgets.

For example, if you regularly ask Alexa to turn on the lights, you can create a new tile via the dashboard. To do this, tap Add New and you can input your request, choose an icon for the tile and tweak which lights you want to turn on and in which room.

It’s worth noting though that while tapping or typing to Alexa is silent on your end, it won’t automatically be silent the other way around, as Alexa will speak back to you once you’ve inputted your request. But you can change this via Brief Mode which is an option when you set up Tap to Alexa.

Instead of Alexa speaking, Brief Mode allows you to change its voice to a short chime. It’s still a noise of course, but it’s much quieter than a loud spoken response. You can also turn down the volume on your Echo Show so it’s less loud and disruptive.

Another thing worth noting is availability. Tap to Alexa is available on most Echo Show devices and Fire Tablets. For the former, you can use Tap to Alexa on all generations of the Echo Show 5, the Echo Show 8, the Echo Show 15, the Echo Show 21 and the Echo Spot.

The only device which differs is the Echo Show 10. For those with a third generation or later model of the Echo Show 10, Tap to Alexa is available, but earlier versions don’t have access to this feature.

It turns out many smart speakers have this ‘hidden’ feature and not just Echo. If you’re a Google Nest user, you can enable Ultrasound Sensing on Google Nest devices so instead of saying ‘Hey Google’ multiple times a day, you can simply approach your Nest speaker and it’ll show you important details without prompting.