7 Recognise a song
If you want to know what’s playing on the radio, type the
station name and ‘now playing’ into Cortana to get a Bing result. If
there’s music playing on your PC, you can say ‘Hey Cortana, what’s
this song?’ for an answer. She can use your PC’s microphone, too,
listening to a song playing for a short while before guessing what
it is. Ask for a song or artist, and she will look in your music library.
8 Lock, restart or shutdown PC
If you use your PC as a late-night media player, being able
to shut it down with a voice command means you can stay in bed.
Say, ‘Hey Cortana, shut down my PC’, or ask for a restart, and she
will ask for confirmation. Answer ‘yes’ and shutdown will continue,
say ‘no’ or ‘cancel’ to stop it. If you want to lock your PC, ask
Cortana and she’ll do it straight away, with no confirmation. Q5
Reminders and alarms
‘Hey Cortana, set an alarm for Monday at 5.30am’ will get
you out of bed unreasonably early, and you can make it every day,
or every Monday, as you choose. ‘View alarms’ shows you what’s
set, and ‘cancel’, followed by the alarm details will do just that.
‘Hey Cortana, remind me to go to the gym at 6am on Monday’ will
pop up a notification at that time, rather than sounding an alarm.
3 Change settings
Type in ‘increase volume’ and Cortana will point you to the
audio properties section of the Settings app, but say ‘Hey Cortana,
increase the volume’ while watching a movie and she will make it
louder for you. The same goes for things like turning Wi-Fi on and
off, or any other simple settings change you can think of such as
‘open lock screen settings’ or ‘activate battery saver’.
6
Add calendar events
You can place new events in your calendar using Cortana,
but you must give her access to it first. The first time you ask
Cortana to manage your calendar, she will ask for permission,
then ask for the subject, date, and which calendar you want it
added to. Then you can ask, ‘Hey Cortana, how’s my schedule
today’ or ‘Add dentist’s appointment to 2.30 on Tuesday’.4 News and weather
Typing ‘news’ or ‘weather’ into Cortana’s search box will
suggest the appropriate apps from the Microsoft Store, launching
them when you press [Enter] and using your location to tailor the
results. You can refine it further, asking for the weather in a
specific city or region, or a forecast for a particular day. News can
be filtered by topic, or you can ask for the score in a sports game.Explore
Master Cortana commands
June 2019 | |^31