Cortana is a bit the funny novelty of Windows 10, which will surely be useful to those who work with the laptop always on, but which especially when trying at the beginning can only tear a smile. In short, Cortana is a voice assistant very similar to Siri on the iPhone, who answers, speaking as if she were a real person, questions asked by voice, even in Italian.
To use Cortana, in addition to a Windows 10 PC (or even a Windows Phone device), it is only necessary to have a working microphone and enable some special options, as we will see in detail at the end of the article.
Additionally, Cortana requires some somewhat invasive privacy permissions, such as access to the location that some people would prefer not to share.
However, if you have Windows 10, at least one test with Cortana must be done, so let's see how to configure the voice assistant and what to say to talk to the computer .
Cortana is active from the moment you read " Ask me something " on the search box at the bottom left, otherwise you will read " Search in Windows and on the web ".
In this case, to activate Cortana, just click on the search bar, press the gear button in the box that opens and then change the first option to activate it.
Cortana will ask to collect information about us which we will have to accept.
You can disable this option in the PC settings, in the Privacy> Voice recognition section, but in this way you will disable Cortana (this option no longer exists).
READ HERE to know how to disable Cortana in Windows 10 .
from the Start menu then go to PC settings and then to Date and Time to find the voice recognition options which are then those to configure the Windows 10 voice assistant.
In particular, the microphone can be configured from here to better receive voice commands.
Once Cortana is enabled, press on the search box, press on the button with the book icon, the one under the house and enter the settings.
From here you can activate Cortana's voice call, saying the words " Hey Cortana !" Into the microphone.
You can also configure the voice assistant to respond only to our voice, starting the recognition of our voice.
At this point you can start talking to the computer, putting your mouth near the PC microphone and saying the phrase Hey Cortana followed by a voice command.
Unlike Google Now or Siri, there is no need to wait after saying Hey Cortana, you can therefore say a complete sentence like " Hey Cortana what time in Rome"> You can activate Cortana even just by pressing the microphone button on the search box.
As phrases you can search the internet (Cortana uses Bing and this cannot be changed in the Windows 10 options) or set reminders saying " Hey Cortana remind me to pay the bill today ".
You can ask Cortana to disable the computer's bluetooth, to search for a file on the PC (for example saying " search the bills on the PC " or even to start the music or any program saying for example " Hey Cortana Start Firefox ".
Talking to the computer will be strange at first and if someone is with us in the room they will look at us like crazy.
Sometimes the reception of the voice commands is wrong and the fault lies with the background noise or the microphone which is too old and not compatible with Cortana.
The Windows 10 voice assistant also works as an information agenda and by clicking on the search bar you can see the news of the day and information on various topics.
Personal interests can be configured by pressing the book button on the left side of the assistant box.
Any category of topics such as food, cinema, finance, weather, news can be deactivated if you are not interested.
The set reminders can also be viewed from the Cortana menu.
Returning instead to the settings of Cortana, accessible from the Clipboard menu or pressing the book icon, it is important to note a clickable line that says " Manage everything Cortana knows about me ".
The link takes you to this page where you can delete all searches made on Bing using Cortana at once and reset it
What is important to know is that everything Cortana says and everything written in the search box is recorded by Microsoft .
READ NOW: What to say to Cortana and the most useful voice assistant commands
