Cortana, as we know is Microsoft’s digital assistant for Windows 10, Mobiles, and Xbox. The assistant after going live has seen many improvements in terms of features, usability, performance. After being launched on Windows Phone for the first time, the personal assistant managed to impress the audience and now also made its way to various other devices, like Xbox, PCs, Android and iOS devices.
With Windows 10, Microsoft managed to get the assistant to PCs, resulting in reaching a larger number of audience. As Cortana is powered by Bing, the market-share of Bing also saw a rise after the launch of Windows 10. You will have to setup Cortana to make use of her. In this tutorial I will be telling you how to setup Cortana on Windows 10 PC.
First of all you should know where she lives. So in Windows 10 PCs, Cortana lives in the taskbar, either as a full-sized search bar or just as an icon. You can choose her appearance, or hide the search function completely. To do that, right-click on an empty portion of the taskbar and move your mouse to the “Cortana”, then select either “Show search icon” or “Show search box”.
Setup Cortana
Getting to Know You
When you first start using Cortana, she will ask you for your name or nickname, enter your name and this is what she will call you.
Notebooks is where Cortana keeps all your details, your reminders, your interests etc. Based on your interests she suggests you places to visit, places to eat around, movies etc. She also keeps track of your location and gives you traffic updates, provided you give her access to your location.
Turning On Hey Cortana
This is one the great features Cortana has. If your microphone is supported, you can call her just by Saying “Hey Cortana” and she will be there to help. Setting up this functionality is simple.
Open Cortana
Click on the Settings icon
Turn the toggle On that says “Let Cortana respond to Hey Cortana”
Now, whenever you want her, just say “Hey Cortana” followed by the command or the operation you want her to perform.
Training Cortana Only To Respond To Your Voice
Along with just waking her up by saying Hey Cortana, you can also make her learn your voice. That comes handy when you want her to respond only when you call her, not anybody else. Make sure you are in a quiet place before you train her your voice.
Open Cortana
Click on the Settings icon
Click on Learn my voice
Click on Start
Repeat whatever you see on the screen to teach her your voice. She may ask you to repeat “Hey Cortana” a number of times along with some other sentences.
Notification Mirroring and Universal Dismiss
Microsoft announced this feature at Build, and it made its way to Windows 10 devices with the Anniversary Update. Notification mirroring made its way to Windows 10 PCs, Mobiles and Android devices last month, with the Anniversary Update, and it works through Cortana. ability to dismiss a notification across all devices universally. The feature is great and one of my favourites.
Basically Notification Mirroring and Universal dismiss, shows your notifications on all your devices connected to the same Microsoft account and also lets you dismiss them all from any of the device. For instance, you could be on a PC and receive a news alert. Using ‘universal dismiss’ will remove that app notification from your phone and vice versa.
Open Cortana
Go to Settings
Turn On the toggle that says Send Notification between devices
To edit the sync settings:
Click on Edit Sync Settings and then turn On/Off settings.