Microsoft Is Preparing to Officially Divest Cortana Smart Home Related Skills

According to foreign media ARS technica, the change will officially take effect with the next update of windows 10. However, Microsoft has not announced when it will officially launch, but the time should not be too long. It should launch in the next few months.

At the same time, this update will also strictly restrict users who can use Cortana. Only users who log in to Microsoft online accounts, including school or work accounts, can access it. If you only use your local windows 10 account, unfortunately, you can't use it!

Andrew Shuman, vice president of Cortana, explained that Cortana will focus more and more on search and productivity in the future.

Shuman said that the updated Cortana will bring a new experience and will have a chat based UI interface, enabling users to interact with Cortana using voice or keyboard.

"For English (U.S.) users, Cortana will pay close attention to the calendar and matters related to meetings, so as to help you better manage your schedule and tasks. You can say or enter requests to find people or files, or quickly create or query e-mail. You can also easily check your calendar, set reminders, and so on," Shuman said.

Although these features sound interesting, they will only be available to users in the United States first. If you live elsewhere, Cortana will only be able to use Bing for search. In addition, Cortana can only "chat" with you until Microsoft officially releases it, but the time is still unknown.

If you are currently using Cortana to control smart home devices, at least some good news is that Microsoft has told the media that users can still use Cortana applications for IOS and Android to manage third-party smart home devices such as lights and music.