Quickly and easily changing volume with Amazon Alexa

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There are a couple of common ways to change the volume on an Amazon Alexa equipped smart speaker like an Amazon Echo smart speaker:

1. Press the physical plus and minus buttons on the top of the speaker to raise or lower the volume.
2. Say “Alexa, volume up” or “Alexa, volume down”

The problem with the approaches above is they only change the volume one increment at a time. If you want to raise or lower the volume a lot, you have to press the buttons multiple times or say the voice commands multiple times.

An alternative is to ask Alexa what the current volume is and then ask Alexa to set the volume to a specific volume level:

1. Say “Alexa, what is the current volume”. Alexa will reply with something like “This device is at volume 8”
2. Based on the current volume Alex tells you, then say something like “Alex, set volume to 3”

The approach above can be a bit cumbersome though. There is a simpler approach where you can just ask Alexa to raise or lower the volume by a certain amount. If you want the volume up and down by a certain amount and you’re not really bothered what the current volume is, you can use the following voice commands:

1. “Alexa, volume up by 5”
2. “Alexa, volume down by 3”

These commands work with not only Amazon’s own Echo smart speakers but also Alexa enabled smart speakers like the Sonos One.