Cortana coming to Windows 10 desktop

Microsoft has confirmed its digital personal assistant and search engine, Cortana, will be coming to the PC with Windows 10.

Originally launched on its Windows Phone platform Cortana offers users an integrated search service that can be controlled by either voice commands or text input and can be talked to in a natural manner.

For instance, saying “Hey Cortana, play my music,” will launch the music app, while “Hey Cortana, please be quiet” will pause it.

Users will be able to manage their data by accessing Cortana’s ‘notebook’, adding or removing interests such as sports, travel and weather. Cortana will learn automatically but users can go into the notebook to removed stuff they don’t want.

More conventional searches are also supported, such as simply typing in the name of an app will bring up matching apps, as well as show apps downloadable from the app store.