To do: Change your smart speaker settings before the holidays

When we have friends and family with kids over, voice assistants can become a favorite attraction. At best, someone will start another “Baby Shark” round and you’ll sing it for a week.

But what if one of those curious kiddos buys toys with your Amazon Echo? Or maybe your niece, Alexis, will have the Echo going haywire.

That’s why it’s worth changing a few settings to make your voice assistants safer when guests come knocking. Do it now before the holiday rush!

Keep kids from shopping on voice assistants

Tech-adventurous toddlers can order things with voice commands before anyone can stop them. That’s a massive pain in the wallet and can take lots of service calls to untangle … and yes, it’s more likely to happen around the holidays.

Frankly, I’m more comfortable turning voice purchasing off unless it’s on something private like my phone. Since Amazon is a big culprit here, it’s a good thing you can prevent Alexa from going on a shopping spree.

  • Open the Alexa app, select More > Settings, then go to Account Settings.
  • Here, you can find the Voice Purchasing menu, where you can turn voice purchasing capabilities off entirely.
  • You can also set up codes to use voice purchasing, but only if you know the passcode.

Google Assistant lets you do something similar to the Payments section in your account. Voice payments aren’t on by default, but you can turn them off here if you’ve set them up before.

Know your mute buttons

Manufacturers include physical mute buttons on every voice assistant device because they care about our privacy. No, they just do it so they can say they care.

When you have guests and it looks like over-indulgence in voice commands (and/or cocktails) could be a problem, tap mute to stop any commands. Look for the crossed-out speaker icon. For displays, an accompanying switch flips the camera off, too … just in case.

Set up parental controls

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App-solutely attached: Android’s Digital Wellbeing tool just got smarter with Screen Time Reminders, aka gentle nudges when you’ve been glued to an app for too long. To turn them on, go to Digital Wellbeing and parental controls > Screen time reminders > Turn on. The catches? You can’t set a time for them to appear, and you can’t control how often they pop up. Still, give it a shot, and let me know if they help!

Give your willpower a hand

Social media apps are designed to keep you scrolling. Do yourself a solid and tell your phone to limit your time on TikTok, Instagram or your weakness of choice.

On iPhone:

  • Go to Settings > Screen Time.
  • Tap App Limits > Add Limit.
  • To set limits for individual apps, tap the category name to see everything there, then select the ones you want to limit.
  • Tap Next at the top right, then set the amount of time allowed.
  • When you finish setting limits, tap Add.

On Android:

  • Open Settings > Digital Wellbeing & parental controls, then tap the chart.
  • Select the app you want to limit or tap the hourglass icon.
  • Choose how much time you can spend on that app. Then, tap OK or Set.
  • The app will switch to black and white when you have one minute. After that, you’re locked out.

⏱️ For the record, you can override it once time runs out, but don’t! You set that limit for a reason. Speaking of time, the past, present and future walked into a bar. It was tense.

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We may receive a commission when you buy through our links, but our reporting and recommendations are always independent and objective.

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ASUS says the tech behind this router provides four times greater network capacity and efficiency in homes up to 3,000 square feet with high traffic, meaning this is the choice for those of you with multiple people using several devices each day. For even stronger coverage or to bring Wi-Fi to areas further from the router, you can add optional mesh points.

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