The Amazon Tap is a great little portable speaker. It has great sound quality and it packs all of the features of Alexa in a package that fits easily into your bag. Well, it had almost all of the features of Alexa. One of the biggest complaints that people had about the Tap is that you have to push the microphone button to ask Alexa to do anything. Sometimes this is convenient, but often you’ll want your Tap to work just like its Echo cousins. Amazon recently pushed an update that allows you to switch your Tap to hands free mode, allowing you to activate it by using the Alexa* wake word, rather than having to push the microphone button.
*Note: at the time of this writing, “Alexa” is the only wake word available for the Tap. This may change in the future, but you will not be able to use “Amazon” or “Computer” to activate your Tap.
Here’s how to enable hands free mode on your Amazon Tap:
- Open the Alexa app or go to alexa.amazon.com
- Under Settings > Devices, locate your Amazon Tap
- Select Hands-free Mode to turn the feature on or off
If you want to temporarily disable hands free mode, for instance while you’re traveling, you can hold the play/pause button for three seconds. Your Tap will stop listening for the wake word until you hold the play/pause button for three seconds again.
The main drawback to enabling hands free mode is that you will only get 8 hours of continuous playback when the Tap is off the charging cradle (down from 9 hours when the feature is turned off). The Tap will also never enter sleep mode with hands free turned on.