Evie Summers
Amazon's Alexa is a virtual assistant designed to respond to your voice. It can play music, answer questions, tell you the weather, and help you get a good night's sleep. While Alexa doesn't have a sleep mode, there are ways to reduce its functionality at night. For example, you can say Alexa, go to sleep, and then reactivate it with a longer, specific wake-up phrase, such as Alexa, wake up. You can also use the microphone button to turn off the device's listening function, but this requires a physical interaction with the device. To help you sleep, Alexa can play white noise, guided meditations, bedtime stories, and more.
| Characteristics | Values |
|---|---|
| Alexa sleep mode | Requires a longer, specific wake phrase to reactivate, e.g. "Alexa, wake up" |
| Sleep mode activation | "Alexa, go to sleep" |
| Sleep mode visual cue | Dim light effect |
| Microphone off | Red microphone button |
| Sleep mode exit | Explicitly turning the microphone on |
| Sleep mode suspension | Alarms and incoming calls |
| Sleep mode auto-activation | Timer to automatically go to sleep mode after x hours of inactivity |
| Sleep sounds | White noise, winter storm, ocean, campfire, rain, thunder, crickets, etc. |
| Sleep stories | Bedtime stories for kids, Kindle books, podcasts |
| Meditation | Guided meditation, breathing and relaxation techniques |
| Night light | "Alexa, open night light" |
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What You'll Learn
Alexa, enable white noise
If you're having trouble falling asleep, your Amazon Echo can help you get some much-deserved rest. You can enable white noise on your Echo by saying:
> Alexa, enable white noise
This will play white noise for an hour. If you want it to play indefinitely, you can ask Alexa to turn the loop on, and it will continue until you ask it to stop. Alternatively, you can say:
> Alexa, open White Noise
> Alexa, start White Noise
> Alexa, launch White Noise
You can also set a sleep timer by saying:
> Alexa, set a sleep timer for [time]
If you want to fall asleep to a different sound, you can enable the Sleep Sounds skill, which has over 125 sounds to choose from, including thunderstorms, ocean sounds, and crickets. To enable this skill, open the Alexa app, go to your Skills section, and type "sleep" in the search bar. Then, select Sleep Sounds and tap Launch. Once it's enabled, you can say:
> Alexa, tell Sleep Sounds to play [sound]
In addition to white noise and sleep sounds, Alexa can also help you fall asleep with guided meditation and bedtime stories. To access guided meditation, say:
> Alexa, open Guided Meditation
There's a meditation of the day, so you'll always have a new one to follow along with. For bedtime stories, you'll need to enable the skill in the Alexa app. Once it's enabled, you can say:
> Alexa, open bedtime stories and play all stories
> Alexa, open bedtime stories and play [story]
If you have kids, you can enable parental permissions in the Alexa app to listen to a selection of stories from Amazon Rapids for free.
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Alexa, open Guided Meditation
If you're having trouble falling asleep, your Amazon Echo can help you get some much-needed rest. Before bed, it's important to ease your mind of the day's stresses. Meditation is a great way to relieve stress and anxiety, and it can help relax and calm your thoughts enough to lull you to sleep.
Your Amazon Echo has guided meditation built-in, so all you need to do is say, "Alexa, open Guided Meditation." You'll be offered a choice of meditations, and you can also request a specific meditation. Each day, the "Guided Meditations" skill offers a new meditation of the day that is between 3 and 8 minutes long. If you don't like the currently playing meditation, you can always say, "Play next" to jump to a different meditation.
There are over 60 different guided meditations, mindfulness exercises, and breathing exercises included, so you'll have a fresh meditation each day. These meditations can help with anxiety and stress, depression, focus, compassion, falling asleep, and much more.
In addition to guided meditation, Alexa can also play various sounds to help you fall asleep, such as rain, ocean waves, or a campfire. You can also enable the loop option to have the sounds play indefinitely until you ask Alexa to stop.
If you're looking for a quick relaxation break during the day, you can try saying, "Alexa, open One Minute Meditation." This skill offers a one-minute guided meditation to help you pause and take a break from your busy day.
So, the next time you're feeling stressed or having trouble sleeping, just say, "Alexa, open Guided Meditation," and let the gentle voice of the meditation guide you to a calm and peaceful state.
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Alexa, play sleep sounds
If you're having trouble falling asleep, your Amazon Echo can help you get some much-needed rest. To start, simply say, "Alexa, play sleep sounds".
Alexa has a range of sleep and relaxation sounds to help you wind down and clear your head. You can ask Alexa to play specific sounds, such as "white noise", "winter storm sounds", "ocean sounds", or "campfire sounds". These sounds can play for an hour, or you can ask Alexa to turn the loop on, and it will play until you ask it to stop.
If you want a different sound each night, you can enable the Sleep Sounds skill, which has over 125 sounds to choose from, including thunderstorms, ocean sounds, and crickets. When you're ready for bed, say, "Alexa, tell Sleep Sounds to play thunderstorms". You can also ask it to play a random sound by saying, "Alexa, play random".
In addition to sleep sounds, Alexa also offers guided meditation, bedtime stories for children, and a night light feature to help you get a good night's rest.
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Alexa, set a sleep timer
If you're having trouble sleeping, your Amazon Echo or Alexa-enabled device can help you fall asleep with guided meditation and relaxation sounds. You can also ask Alexa to tell you a bedtime story or read a book from your Kindle library. However, you may not want these playing all night, so you can set a sleep timer.
To set a sleep timer, make sure you're in the room with your Echo device and simply say something like, "Alexa, set a sleep timer for one hour." After an hour, Alexa will automatically stop playing whatever podcast, music, or story you're listening to.
You can also use the sleep timer with the various sleep sounds available on Alexa. For example, you can say, "Alexa, enable white noise," or "Alexa, enable ocean sounds." These will play indefinitely unless you ask Alexa to stop or set a sleep timer.
Another option is to use the Night Light feature. To enable this, say, "Alexa, open Night Light for 30 minutes."
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Alexa, go to sleep
While Alexa does not have a sleep mode, there are several ways to use your Amazon Echo device to help you fall asleep.
One way is to use the guided meditation feature. Before bed, you can say, "Alexa, open Guided Meditation." There is a meditation of the day, so you will always have a new one to follow along with.
You can also use sleep sounds to help you fall asleep. There are several skills on Alexa that play sleeping sounds, such as Sleep Sounds by Sleep Jar, Relaxing Sounds, and Sweet Dreams: Sounds & Meditations for Sleep. To use these, you can say something like, "Alexa, ask Sleep Sounds for ocean waves" or "Alexa, ask Relaxing Sounds for windy leaves."
If you want to fall asleep to a bedtime story, you can enable this skill in the Alexa app. Then, you can say something like, "Alexa, open bedtime stories and play all stories" or "Alexa, tell a bedtime story to [name]."
To ensure that your chosen feature doesn't play all night, you can set a sleep timer by saying, "Alexa, set a sleep timer for [period of time]." For example, you can say, "Alexa, set a sleep timer for one hour."
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Frequently asked questions
No, you do not need to tell Alexa to sleep. However, you can put your Alexa device in sleep mode by saying "Alexa, go to sleep", which will then require a longer, specific wake-up phrase to reactivate, such as "Alexa, wake up".
Sleep mode is a feature that allows your Alexa device to ignore almost all commands. This can be useful if you want your device to stop trying to perform random actions when you have the TV on or if you want to prevent it from accidentally activating while you sleep.
To enable sleep mode, simply say "Alexa, go to sleep". Your device will then require a longer, specific wake-up phrase to reactivate.
The wake-up phrase to exit sleep mode is "Alexa, wake up".
Yes, you can set a timer for Alexa to automatically go into sleep mode after a certain period of inactivity. To do this, say "Alexa, set a sleep timer for [period of time]".
