Amazon Alexa brief mode not working for several users (brief mode is on but still says 'Okay')

Alexa is a popular virtual assistant that is developed by Amazon. Initially released in 2014, the developers have added several new features and skills to Alexa that enable users to perform various actions.

In 2019, Amazon announced that they had sold more than 100 million Alexa-enabled devices with the tech giant having more than 10,000 employees working on Alexa and other related products.

While Alexa is pretty intelligent, hearing her say ‘Okay’ to everything you ask might be frustrating at times. To stop that, Amazon added a Brief mode that silences interactions like these and replaces them with a beep.

In case you did not know, the Brief mode toggle can be found by opening the Alexa app, heading over to Settings, and under the ‘Voice Responses’ option.

But recent reports (1,2,3) from Alexa users suggest that Brief Mode is not working. The bug has been annoying a lot of users who want to use Alexa but do not want her to respond with ‘Okay’ to everything they say.

Hey guys, all my Echos are suddenly replying “okay” even though my Brief Mode is turned on. I tried resetting the devices but it doesn’t seem to fix the issue. (I was able to toggle Whisper Mode on/off without any problems.) I saw that it was a thing around 2018-19 with people posting about it, but I don’t know if the issue was resolved, or if the issue was a temporary problem for them. Anyone having same issue recently?
(Source)

Hi, so as the title says, my Echo (3rd gen dot) was using brief mode just fine yesterday, i love the little sound it makes instead of saying Okay to everything, but today I turned off a light using my Echo and she said Okay, at first I thought it was just a bug, but I kept commanding her just in case, she still says okay, i thought that maybe an update caused her to lose her setting so I googled how to find it on the app, I checked and it’s On, but Alexa says Okay, then I decided to turn it off, as it might have reversed, nothing, restarting her by plugging her off/on, nothing, anyone can help me?
(Source)

Unfortunately, Amazon is yet to comment on the matter. We hope the developers soon acknowledge the issue where Brief mode on Alexa is not working and fix it as soon as possible.

When they do, we will update this space with relevant information so stay tuned.

Note: We have more such stories in our dedicated Amazon Section so be sure to follow them as well.

PiunikaWeb started as purely an investigative tech journalism website with main focus on ‘breaking’ or ‘exclusive’ news. In no time, our stories got picked up by the likes of Forbes, Foxnews, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and many others. Want to know more about us? Head here.