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Amazon Alexa's Brief Mode stops the voice assistant from saying, 'OK'

When you give Alexa a command, she replies with a simple "OK." Now, you can opt out of that response.

Ashlee Clark Thompson Associate Editor
Ashlee spent time as a newspaper reporter, AmeriCorps VISTA and an employee at a healthcare company before she landed at CNET. She loves to eat, write and watch "Golden Girls" (preferably all three at the same time). The first two hobbies help her out as an appliance reviewer. The last one makes her an asset to trivia teams. Ashlee also created the blog, AshleeEats.com, where she writes about casual dining in Louisville, Kentucky.
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You can enable Brief Mode if you want to hear less from Amazon Alexa, the voice-activated assistant that powers this Amazon Echo smart speaker.

 Ian Knighton/CNET

A new feature within the Amazon Alexa app lets you quiet down the voice-activated assistant. When you enable the "Brief Mode," Alexa will respond to your commands with a short, beeping sound rather than her customary "OK." Reddit users reported seeing the new feature this week. 

You access the Brief Mode in the Amazon Alexa app's Settings Menu under "Alexa Voice Responses." You can also ask your Alexa-enabled device to turn on the Brief Mode. Once the setting is enabled, you can ask Alexa to control devices to which she is connected and she will respond with beeps rather than "OK" to let you know that she received and completed the task. 

Don't want to completely quiet Alexa down? Amazon also rolled out a "Follow-Up Mode" last week that's designed to let you will let you talk to Alexa more naturally. That mode will let you make successive requests without needing to use Alexa's wake word between each command.