Tech Advisor - UK (2020-01)

JANUARY 2020 • TECH ADVISOR 63

and others suggests a future where several digital

assistants could live on your PC – including the lock

screen, which you can configure (Settings > Cortana

> Talk to Cortana) to allow you to trigger Cortana by

saying “Hey Cortana” while the lock screen is enabled.

With Amazon’s Alexa now integrated within Cortana,

enabling Alexa from the lock screen should work, right?

Nope – or at least, not yet. Using the ‘Alexa’ wake

word didn’t work on my test machine, and asking

Cortana to enable Alexa (“Cortana, launch Alexa”)

prompted Cortana to tell me to unlock my PC first.

(‘Cortana, launch Alexa’ is the current way to open

Alexa within Windows.)

Downloading the Alexa app and turning on

hands-free Alexa capabilities allowed me to access

Unfortunately, waking Amazon’s Alexa

from the lock screen didn’t seem to work.

Using the Alexa app within the Windows

10 November 2019 Update worked fine,

though, as expected

JANUARY 2020 • TECH ADVISOR 63

and others suggests a future where several digital

assistants could live on your PC – including the lock

screen, which you can configure (Settings > Cortana

> Talk to Cortana) to allow you to trigger Cortana by

saying “Hey Cortana” while the lock screen is enabled.

With Amazon’s Alexa now integrated within Cortana,

enabling Alexa from the lock screen should work, right?

Nope – or at least, not yet. Using the ‘Alexa’ wake

word didn’t work on my test machine, and asking

Cortana to enable Alexa (“Cortana, launch Alexa”)

prompted Cortana to tell me to unlock my PC first.

(‘Cortana, launch Alexa’ is the current way to open

Alexa within Windows.)

DownloadingtheAlexaappandturningon

hands-free Alexa capabilities allowed me to access

Unfortunately, waking Amazon’s Alexa
from the lock screen didn’t seem to work.
Using the Alexa app within the Windows
10 November 2019 Update worked fine,
though, as expected