How to set up Amazon Alexa voice profiles

Smart speakers aren’t always personal devices. It’s common for them to be shared by multiple users in a household, which can potentially wreak havoc if they’re all linked to one person’s data. For Amazon Alexa users, the solution to this is voice profiles. Alexa speakers can be trained to recognize up to 10 different voices, ensuring everyone gets a tuned experience.

Why should I add voice profiles to Amazon Alexa?

Alexa voice profiles enable a number of features, among them personalized Amazon shopping. Each person gets to add products to their own wishlist, or make purchases from their personal account.

Profiles also tailor things like calling, calendars, reminders, and flash briefings (news updates). In the case of calling and messaging, for example, each person gets to maintain a separate contact list.

Read more: How to use Amazon Alexa

If you’re subscribed to the Amazon Music Unlimited Family Plan, each plan member gets to link their profile to their music collection. Sadly this doesn’t apply to other services, like Spotify or Apple Music.

How do I set up an Alexa voice profile?

Setting up an Alexa voice profile is a relatively straightforward process. Each person making a profile does, however, need to be signed into their individual account, ideally linked to an Amazon Household. Households allow people to share Prime benefits and restrict teen and child accounts (if necessary).

• Open the Alexa app for Android or iOS.
• Tap on the More tab, then Settings.
• Choose Your Profile & Family, then a similar button with the profile holder’s name (probably your own, unless it’s a kid’s account).
• Tap Add Your Voice or Set Up Voice ID.
• Follow prompts to create a unique Voice ID.

Once you’ve set up a profile, it can take about 20 minutes or so for the data to sync across all speakers, so be patient if it doesn’t work right away.

Amazon Household may not be available in your region. The option is missing in Canada, for example, despite that country having Alexa, Prime, and related services. Canadians can create Voice IDs, regardless.

How do you add more Alexa voice profiles?

The process of adding additional Alexa voice profiles is similar to setting up your primary. You’ll have to ask others to install the Alexa app, though, or sign out of the app on your device and ask the other people to sign in. Children can be given Voice IDs from within your account, but you’ll need their cooperation for voice training. If a child is too young to understand what’s going on, in other words, the process might be difficult.