How do I stop an Amazon Echo from making a sound after restarting?

Question

When booting, the Amazon Echo plays a sound and says 'hello', which is usually not a problem, but I'm concerned that if I have a power failure in the night, the Echo might reboot and play a loud sound, waking me up.

One user seems to have experienced a similar problem on the Amazon forum:

[OP]: I'd prefer Echo didn't make a startup sound and say "hello" after a power outage. Is there a way to disable the startup sounds?

[reply]: Do you really have so many power outages that this is a significant problem? I've only had one power outage in the past two years.

[OP]: Yes. Construction-related. Likely to continue for at least a year.

Understandably, in a situation such as this, it is not at all desirable for the sound to be playing frequently at night. One reply suggested an uninterruptible power supply (UPS), but I would like to avoid this if possible because they are quite expensive.

How can I stop my Echo from playing the startup greeting? Is it supported at all (or is there a suitable workaround)?

Answer 1

I'm a few hundred kilometers away from my Echo, so unfortunately I can't test anything. I found no way to deactivate the sound altogether. If I recall correctly however that waking hello is tied to the usual volume levels one sets.

Fortunately that volume level is different from the timer and alarm volume levels. So one could at least over night set the speech volume level to zero and still be woken up by a reasonably volume level for the alarm clock. However you'd have to reset the speech volume level back up in the morning, manually—well, by voice.

Of course, that's only necessary if the Echo is the alarm clock. If not, one could always have the echo on a timed power plug shutting its power off completely over night. Maybe one could even connect the echo power supply to the alarm clock, but that'd be a different question.