Anything You Can Ask Cortana to Do in Windows 10

Posted on August 3, 2015 by resourcefulman

Cortana is one of the coolest new features in Windows 10. You may already be familiar with personal assistants like Google Now and Siri, but now they’re built right into your desktop! Here’s how to get information, manage your schedule, and even run a few Google commands.

Using Cortana: Voice Against Typing

There are two ways to use Cortana: you can use voice commands, or you can type commands in the Start menu. If you choose the former, you can turn on the “Hey Cortana” feature. That being said, you can say “Hey Cortana” out loud to trigger voice commands without pressing any buttons. Here’s how:

Find “Cortana Settings” in the Start Menu.
Turn on the toggle under “Hey Cortana.”
(Optional) Under “Answer Best”, you can select “Me” to customize Cortana to your voice. You will need to do some quick exercises to teach Cortana your voice. Otherwise, Cortana will suit anyone.

Although Cortana works with voice commands, this is not necessary. All commands that we list here can also be entered. Of course, printing entire sentences is pretty inefficient. Luckily, Cortana has a pretty good idea of what you mean, so you can be a little flexible with your wording. For example, “What’s on my schedule today?” “What’s going on with me today?” and “my schedule for today” serve the same function, so try different options and see which works for you!

Get information when you need it

Any good personal assistant should be able to provide you with the information you need when you need it. Cortana can offer a lot of personalized information based on what she knows about you. These commands can offer information about your schedule, weather,

It largely depends on how many Microsoft services you use. So if, for example, you are not using the Microsoft Calendar app, you will not be able to get your schedule information. In some cases, you can also sync with Google services to fill in the blanks. Note which services these commands depend on, where appropriate:

What’s the weather like? If you have location services turned on, you can ask this question to find out what the weather is like in your area. Alternatively, you can ask about the weather in a particular area to get the same information for any area.
What’s on my schedule? If you have any scheduled events, you can ask Cortana what will happen today, tomorrow, next week, or any other time frame. You can also ask natural questions such as “What will I have this weekend?” to see what’s on your calendar. It depends on Outlook or the built-in Calendar app. You can sync your Google Calendar , but you won’t be able to add new events.
What is the status of my flight? If Microsoft knows about upcoming flights (usually by email via Outlook), you can ask about “my flight” to get up-to-date information about it. Alternatively, you can inquire about the flight by the number, if you know it. Syncing Gmail with the built-in email application or Outlook can help Cortana catch some of this information.
How long will it take for me to get to [location]? If you have location services turned on, you can ask about travel time to a specific location to estimate how long it will take to get there.
Show me the way to [place]. Similarly, you can use Cortana to find your way to a place if you know the name or address. This will open in Bing Maps. At the moment, there seems to be no way to open it in an alternative app. Technically, you can use any Maps app available in the Windows Store, but none of the typical well-known mapping companies seem to have a decent option in the Store just yet.
Show me my notes. If you are using OneNote, you can use this command to find your notes. You can also filter it by date range. For example, “Show me my January 2015 notes” to filter the results.

When you are busy with work, it is convenient to be able to simply type or say a command and get an answer about what is happening in your life. The only downside is that much of this requires using Microsoft services (or at least syncing with them), but if you spend a lot of time at your desk it might be worth it.

Manage your time with reminders, events and alarms

If your personal assistant only knows how to read what you’ve already told him, this assistant probably won’t be very helpful. Fortunately, Cortana can actually be more proactive in managing your time and productivity. While managing calendar events requires the use of one of Microsoft’s services, alarms and reminders work directly in Windows 10 itself, no special services are required.

Make an appointment. If you are using Microsoft Calendar Services, you can create or edit appointments using a voice command. You can simply say “Make an appointment” to enter the information manually, or say the details out loud (for example: “Make an appointment tomorrow at 2:00 pm”).
Reschedule my meeting. You can also change existing events using commands such as “Reschedule my appointment tomorrow from 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm”. Cortana can usually recognize events in your calendar by name, so you can say something like “Move the night of bad movies to 20:00.”
Set a reminder. Cortana can set reminders, such as “Remind me to have lunch in time, at least once every noon.” If you are using Windows Phone (yes, you can finally hear your voice, phone users), you can set up reminders to sound when you reach a specific location or when a specific contact calls you.
Show me my reminders. This command will show you all the reminders you are currently getting. You can also press the menu button and select History to view the reminders you have already completed.
Set your alarm. As with reminders, you can set an alarm for a specific time of the day. You can set them up to run only once or repeat on a regular basis.
Show me my alarms. You can ask Cortana to show you a list of all active alarms. The new Alarms & Clocks application opens, allowing you to edit or delete all existing alarms.

Even if you don’t want to use Microsoft services, Reminders and Alerts in Windows 10 make it very easy to stay on top of what you need to do without having to launch a bunch of separate apps. Reminders will appear in the notification bar and the alarm will ring when you need them.

Find basic information right in the start menu

Not every question you ask requires an entire browser tab. Sometimes you have a simple question that requires a simple answer. While you’re probably used to getting some of these responses from your phone, Cortana can now answer many of them right from the Start menu. For instance:

How tall is Jeff Goldblum? Cortana can provide you with basic information about famous public figures such as height, weight, age, marital status, etc.
Give a definition of “superfluous”. Cortana can quickly define a word for you so you don’t look like an idiot in this internet controversy.
When is Labor Day? Because not only are you going to confuse Labor Day and Memorial Day, now everyone on Facebook will laugh at you for it. Better ask Cortana first.
How long does Age of Ultron last? Cortana can quickly determine when a movie is being watched. However, Cortana cannot provide you with the much needed expanded version of this film.
Who is the CEO of Microsoft? Cortana can quickly identify many important people. Although, like the typical American, she didn’t seem to be very good at answering questions about local government officials.
What is the theme song for Firefly? Cortana can fix this. You should too.
How much is one US dollar in about Japanese yen? Whether you’re traveling, vacationing, or hiding from the FBI, Cortana can tell you how much your money is worth in other currencies.
What time is it in California? If your boss also doesn’t live in the same time zone as you, it could save his life.

All of this (and more) usually outputs the results directly to the Start menu. This is a convenient way to get a quick response without being distracted from your work. Of course, if Cortana doesn’t know the answer, you will be sent to the browser where she will look for the answer in Bing, so if your goal is to avoid opening new tabs this might work best with questions. you know what she can answer.

Search the web with Bing results

Yes, many of us prefer Google and we have a special trick for you (us) guys. However, Microsoft has a lot of cool features that Cortana can do with Bing. Some of the questions Bing can answer when you get kicked out of web search results are:

Show me nearby Indian restaurants. Curiously (and thankfully) this is not a Maps app, but a Bing search for restaurants in your browser.
Show me pictures of Mila Kunis. You can use Cortana to search Bing images for just about anything. But mostly Mila Kunis.
Show me a video on how to clear seeds from pomegranates. In fact, if you need a video on how to remove pomegranate seeds , we can help you . For all other videos, Bing will take care of that.
When is the next baseball game? To be honest, it took me about four tries to find a sports-related voice command that worked because I don’t know anything about sports. In the end, I confirmed that Bing can handle them.
What is the population of the United States? I’m pretty sure I’ve looked at this more times than was reasonable.

In general, you can use Cortana to search the Internet for anything. By default, Cortana uses Bing for your web results, so the answers are a bit limited. However, there are many more answers you can get from Bing without even changing search engines.

Using (some) Google Voice Commands with the Chrome Extension

Let’s be real for a second: Google has a huge head start in voice commands over Microsoft. They are good at it too. Naturally, many of us prefer Google over Bing. If you do that too, or you just have a lot more information tied to your Google account, you can use the previously mentioned Bing2Google extension to use Cortana to run Google commands.

Bing2Google works by redirecting your Bing searches to Google after they load in your browser. This means that any command that hits the browser (including everything in the last section) can technically be executed as a Google command. You can use this to do regular Google searches, commands that Microsoft doesn’t support, or just use Google as an alternative to regular Bing commands. In addition to the commands in the previous section, here are a few commands we’ve found work with Google but not Bing:

Where are my parcels? This will show you a list of all packages that you received emails about in Gmail. He cannot tell you why your package went from Texas to Canada on its way to Oklahoma.
When does Battle and Brew close? You can ask Google when a particular store or restaurant will close and get a direct answer.
What is tonsillitis? Earlier this year, Google began recruiting real doctors to provide information for its knowledge network, which can be found through a simple search.
What’s in Tom Collins? Google is a pretty good bartender (aside from the fact that you make cocktails yourself). A quick search can give you recipes for a range of cocktails.

Only Google has tons of its own teams, so we won’t list each of them, but you get the idea. Even if you’re not a Bing fan, this extension lets you use Cortana for all the teams it can support and use Google for everything else. This is the best of both worlds. Of course, if you are using Chrome. There’s always a catch.

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