Cortana is one of the most significant features of Windows 10. Even though it’s native to Windows Phone, it’s been fully integrated into the desktop operating system, making it a digital assistant. Personal efficiency on your computer. As a powerful digital assistant, Cortana can do more than tell you jokes and sing songs. That being said, if you’ve never used the digital assistant, then you might feel lost.
Here are a few things you can do with Cortana to get you started.
Set reminders and alarms
Using Cortana, you can easily set reminders on your device by telling her to do so with just a few words. For example, telling you, ” Remind me to get the egg tomorrow 10am ” will cause you to set a reminder. When the time comes, Cortana will remind you of the task. Not just at specific times, you can also make Cortana remind you of things when you go to a particular place or talk to someone on your contact list.
Besides setting reminders, you can also create quick alarms. To set the alarm, all you have to do is say, ” Set alarm for 5 AM tomorrow ” and Cortana performs the task. You can see all of your current alarms by issuing a command like “Show alerts“.
Open the app
Launching apps or desktop programs with Cortana is as easy as clicking an icon on the taskbar. Just call Cortana with the voice command “Hey, Cortana” and say, “Open [Name of App]. “As you can see from the image below, I’m opening the built-in Groove Music installer. If the programs are designed to work with Cortana, you can even control the apps or programs with voice commands.
For example, when using the Groove Music app, you can instruct Cortana to play the next song by simply saying, “Next song“.
Use natural language to search for files on your computer
Cortana is designed to understand natural language. You can use it to search for your files like documents, photos, etc. For example, if you want to see your recent photos say ” Hey Cortana, find my picture ” and Cortana will show all your images stored locally and On OneDrive.
Perform calculations
I usually use the default calculator app to do the necessary calculations. I use AutoHotKey to launch the desktop application quickly. But the thing is, Cortana can do the basic math. All you have to do is, press the Start button and enter the number and you’ll have the answer displayed immediately. This is not groundbreaking, but it is quite handy for necessary calculations. (You don’t have to talk to interact with Cortana. Typing is fine too).
Check the weather
This is obvious to most of you, but you can use Cortana to get quick weather updates in your city. For those of you who don’t know, All you have to do is ask Cortana something like, “ what is the weather like in my current location. “If you want weather information about another city, then just replace“ my current location ”with the city name.
Send emails using Cortana
If you’re using the built-in Mail app to manage your email account, you can also use Cortana to send the email. To send an email using Cortana, call Cortana and say ” Email James “
Create Calendar Events
Like you can add reminders and events, you can use Cortana to create calendar events. To add a calendar event, say something like “ Hey Cortana, let’s add Kevin tomorrow at 5pm on the calendar. “With this simple nature command, Cortana adds the event to the calendar. The good thing is that you can choose the calendar from the drop-down menu. This is a useful feature if you are using other calendars like Google Calendar.
That being said, you first need to add Google Calander to the default calendar app in Windows 10.
Conclusion
As you can see, Cortana isn’t just a pretty feature designed for chatting, telling jokes, and singing songs. Using Cortana may feel awkward at first, but try to see how well it works for you. After all, the more people who use it, the better.
Feel free to comment below to share the things you like that you use for Cortana.
