Cortana is a delightful assistant when you’re on the desktop, but when you’re in the need of an important reminder or simply want to know something really quickly you will have to login and go to the desktop to access her. Find out how to make use of Cortana even when on the lock screen in Windows 10!
Voice-based assistants have become an increasingly popular fad amongst desktop users, especially when we look at the two biggest desktops on the market – Mac OS X and Windows.
Where we Siri will be soon helping Mac users in OS X 10.12, Cortana has been a faithful desktop assistant since the launch of Windows 10. She has continued to prove herself as an invaluable productivity tool time and again.
Unfortunately, that productivity is lost to the user once they see they have to unlock their system to access her once more.
If you simply don’t have the time or the effort to go through unlocking the system and then locking it once more, you can now make Cortana a part of the Lock Screen experience as of Insider Preview Build 14328. This feature will be made available to all users later this year (probably July) with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. We’ll update this post when that happens.
What can you do with Cortana from the Windows 10 lock screen?
While Cortana is on the lock screen, you can set reminders and ask her general run of the mill questions which would otherwise require you to be talking to her on the desktop.
If you have to access a data sensitive app such as mail or calendar, Cortana will prompt you to unlock the device much like Google Now and Siri when on their respective smartphone devices.
If you want to bring Cortana to your lock screen, follow the simple series of steps below. Keep in mind, again, that you have to be on Insider Preview Build 14328 or above to make use of this.
You have to open Cortana’s settings by pressing Windows Key + S, and navigate to Notebook followed by Settings.
When in this Settings page, you will have to navigate to the option of “Lock screen options” and enable the option of “Let me use Cortana even when my device is locked“.
It of course goes without saying that you need to have the option of “Hey Cortana” enabled for this to work.
When you have done the above, press Windows Key + L and say the phrase “Hey Cortana” to see if the above process worked for you.
Much like its smartphone counterparts, Cortana will be able to give you as much help she can while on the lock screen such as setting reminders, giving answers to questions such as the current weather, traffic on the way home, etc.
At the time of accessing certain restricted content which will need the access to the desktop, you will be prompted to unlock the device.
This is an especially handy feature which we can hope will make its way into the Anniversary Update that is slated to be released in the coming months for the regular customers of Windows 10.
If you are a frequent user of Cortana and have been using this feature, let us know in the comments section below about your thoughts on this and whether Cortana is as useful as her smartphone counterparts.
The post How To Enable Cortana On Lock Screen In Windows 10 appeared first on Windows Clan.
