Cortana is one of the best new features of Windows 10. In this article we’ll take a closer look at what she can do and how you can interact with Cortana.
How do you interact with Cortana?
First things first. To be able to use all the things Cortana can do for you, you first need to know how to interact with it. There are two ways you can tell Cortana what you want:
1. Write your question or order in the Cortana search box on the taskbar.
2. Talk to Cortana: speak as natural as possible about any subject you want. For this, you’ll need to click on the microphone icon in its search box on the taskbar. Note, however, that you will need to speak in one of the languages that Cortana understands: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish or Chinese.
What can you ask Cortana to do?
Cortana can do a lot of things. To name just a few, it can open applications, search on your device or the Internet, and even change settings in Windows 10.
Cortana can also handle your personal affairs, such as monitoring your calendar and agenda, setting alarms and notifications, and more.
Moreover, Cortana is always there when you want to know the weather, the latest news or when you just want to talk to someone. And by the way, Cortana is a very good listener!
So far, we’ve seen only a few of Cortana’s features, but we promise that in our next articles about her we’ll talk much more about all the things she can do.
How we use the Cortana interface
When you open the Cortana, you will notice a few buttons to its left, which can be used to access all the features and settings of the Cortana.
The first button, from top to bottom, looks like three distinct lines one above the other. If you click on it, the Cortana menu will expand and display the names of the other buttons in the list.
From top to bottom, the Cortana menu options are Home, Notebook, Reminders, and Feedback.
Let’s see where each of these buttons takes us:
1. Home: takes you to Cortana’s home screen where you can see the information that Cortana thinks you will find interesting.
2. Notebook: It’s where Cortana keeps all your settings and where you can personalize all aspects of her workflow and every piece of information you want her to know about you. This section is a complex issue and we believe it deserves its own tutorial, which we promise to publish soon.
3. Reminders: Allows you to view and manage all the reminders you have set. You can also use this section to manually add other reminders using a mouse and keyboard, or just a virtual keyboard if you have a touch screen.
4. Feedback: It gives you the opportunity to send feedback about Cortana to Microsoft.
Conclusion
In our opinion, Cortana turns out to be a very good virtual assistant. It can do a lot to help you be more productive, but it can be fun at the same time. And even more, talking to Cortana seems to be a very normal and natural thing. However, there are still many things and features that Microsoft can add to Cortana. But until new versions, how do you like it so far?