Send sound

With this action, you can play one of the built-in Alexa sounds on a device, such as a doorbell chime, a barking dog, or a trumpet. It is a quick way to add an audible alert to your automations.

The available sounds come from Amazon’s sound library. In the UI, you can pick one from a list. If you need more sounds or richer audio, use the notify entities with advanced markup instead.

Using this action from the user interface

If you prefer building automations and scripts visually, Home Assistant walks you through this action step by step. You pick what to target, tweak a few options, and save. No YAML knowledge required.

To use this action in an automation or script:

1. Go to Settings > Automations & scenes.
2. Open an existing automation or script, or select Create to start a new one.
3. If you’re setting up a new automation, add a trigger in the When section. Scripts don’t need a trigger.
4. In the Then do section, select Add action.
5. From the search box, search for and select Alexa Devices: Send sound.
6. Select the device that should play the sound.
7. In the Alexa Skill sound file field, choose the sound you want to play.
8. Select Save.

Options in the UI

Using this action in YAML

If you work directly in YAML, or you want to know exactly what Home Assistant does under the hood, this section has the technical reference. It lists the field names you use in YAML, their types, and which ones are required.

In YAML, refer to this action as alexa_devices.send_sound. A basic example looks like this:

action: alexa_devices.send_sound
data:
  device_id: 037d79c1af96c67ba57ebcae560fb18e
  sound: amzn_sfx_doorbell_chime_01

This plays a doorbell chime on the selected Alexa device.

Options in YAML

Good to know

• Only the sounds from Amazon’s built-in library are supported. For other audio or speech, use the notify entities with advanced markup.

Try it yourself

Ready to test this? Open Developer tools > Actions, search for this action, fill in the fields, and select Perform action. You see what happens on your actual entitiesAn entity represents a sensor, actor, or function in Home Assistant. Entities are used to monitor physical properties or to control other entities. An entity is usually part of a device or a service. [Learn more] without writing a line of YAML.

More examples

Real scenarios where this action shows up in automations and scripts. Copy any example and adapt it to your setup.

Automation: play a doorbell sound when motion is detected

Play a doorbell chime on an Alexa device when a camera detects motion at your front door.

• Trigger: State: Front door motion sensor changes to on
• Action: Alexa Devices: Send sound

alias: "Doorbell sound on front door motion"
triggers:
  - trigger: state
    entity_id: binary_sensor.front_door_motion
    to: "on"
actions:
  - action: alexa_devices.send_sound
    data:
      device_id: 037d79c1af96c67ba57ebcae560fb18e
      sound: amzn_sfx_doorbell_chime_01

Still stuck?

The Home Assistant community is quick to help: join Discord for real-time chat, post on the community forum with the action you’re calling and what you expected to happen, or share on our subreddit /r/homeassistant.

Related actions

These actions work well alongside this one:

• Send text command: Sends a text command to an Alexa device as if you had spoken it.

• Send info skill command: Runs a built-in Alexa info skill, such as the date, weather, or a joke.