How to change Alexa’s voice to a masculine tone on an Amazon Echo

Alexa’s soothing voice has been echoing through smart homes since 2015, and we’ve become used to the assistant’s feminine tone. While both Google and Apple offer a choice of voices, including a male tone and even some celebrity vocals, for their assistants, Amazon has lagged behind – with just one other choice, Samuel L. Jackson, which was released in 2019. Until recently that is.

Amazon recently introduced a masculine voice for its smart speakers and smart display, known as Ziggy, along with the option to have Alexa adopt the voice of Melissa McCarthy or Shaquille O’Neal (although those do come at a cost of $4.99).

So whether you’ve got an Amazon Echo Dot (2020) or the Amazon Echo Show 10, you can change how the voice assistant sounds…. if you’re in the US, that is.

Like many great Amazon Echo features including being able to make zoom calls on its smart displays, and Alexa Guard, which sees the voice assistant notify your smartphone if it hears an unusual noise in your home, Ziggy and Alexa’s celebrity personalities are not currently available in the UK or Australia.

We spoke to Amazon and a representative confirmed that the ability to change Alexa’s voice is restricted to the US at present. Amazon told TechRadar it wasn’t able to reveal if this will change in the future.