If you have more than one Echo, you can turn two Echos into an in-home intercom system. And even if you don’t have two devices, you can still use this feature with the Alexa app for mobile devices.
Setting Up the Amazon Echo Intercom
You may have this feature already turned on and don’t realize it. Here’s how to turn it on.
- Open the Amazon Alexa app on your phone and select Settings.
- On your list of devices, select the name of the first Echo you want to use as an intercom.
- After General select Drop in.
- Select Household only. (Toggle it to On if you’re ok with extending this feature to your contacts. This is different to the Amazon Echo’s calling feature, and will allow them to start speaking to you without responding to a call.)
- Repeat the steps above for your other Amazon Echo devices.
Note: If you need to rename your Echo devices, opting for easy-to-remember names, go to Settings and under Devices, select the Echo you want to rename. Scroll down to device name and select Edit. Enter the new name and select Save.
Now that you have the feature enabled on both Echos, you can use the following voice command to activate the intercom feature: “Alexa, drop in on [Echo Name].”
The first time you do this, Alexa will also prompt you to enable the feature in your household with a voice command. So depending on how you have your Echos named, you will need to say the name of the Amazon Echo in the other room that you’re trying to communicate with.
Once you’re done, you can use the voice command: “Alexa, end drop in.”
You can also use the feature from the Alexa app on your phone. Go to the Calling & Messaging tab and select the Drop in button. You can choose which of your devices you want to connect to, place the call on speaker, and mute your mic.
If you want to give people a warning before you start talking, you could use the calling feature instead and say: “Alexa, call [Echo Name].”
This feature should work with an Alexa-enabled app, including the regular Amazon Echo and Echo Dot.
