Keeping with the spirit of the holidays, Amazon has introduced a brand-new novelty voice for its popular cloud-based voice service Alexa, and it’s none other than Santa himself.
In order to get Alexa to change to the voice of ‘Ol Saint Nick on any one of the best Alexa speakers, you’ll simply need to speak the command, “Alexa, enable ‘Hey Santa.’” After doing so, you can get straight to engaging with everyone’s favorite bearded gift-giver in a variety of funny and unique manners.
As for precisely what all you can do with Alexa’s festive new voice, there’s actually quite a lot. You can ask Santa to sing you holiday songs, or he can tell you some interesting stories. If you make a request for it, he’ll even pop off a few jokes to get you laughing. Of course, you can also have him do all of the things you’ve already come to rely on Alexa for, but it’s obviously extra fun to set a timer when you have a jolly voice confirming it on the other end.
In addition to these general features, you can ask Santa a variety of Christmas-specific questions for some humorous responses. Simply say “Hey Santa” before asking, and then you can rattle off some inquiries about his favorite foods, or ask him about his beloved reindeer. Even better, if you ask him if you’re naughty or nice, he’ll hit you with some questions of his own to determine just how deserving you are of presents this year.
Not every single question can be answered by Santa, unfortunately. You might be surprised at how many voice lines are available, but there are limitations. When you run into one, however, you can resort back to simply asking Alexa as you normally would before returning your attention to Santa.
Other popular Alexa voice changes have included celebrities like Shaq, Samuel L Jackson and Gordon Ramsay, but they typically come at a cost. Luckily, Amazon has opted to give us all a holiday gift this year, as you can get Santa talking at no additional charge right now.
