Tweak allows Cortana to offer more responses

Mar 11, 2015 14:07 GMT  ·  By

Cortana is still available in a limited number of countries and languages, but Microsoft is working on bringing the personal assistant to more users across the world and in as many languages as possible.

In the meantime, skilled coders have managed to add new commands to Cortana and enable the personal assistant to offer responses to many more questions and tasks, which is exactly what Microsoft should be working on right now.

The tweak, which is now available on GitHub for anyone interested in trying it, is called CortanaProxy and plays the role of a server that actually takes control of the input text and reacts accordingly, based on a predefined set of answers.

And because making Cortana say “I love you” shouldn't be too difficult with this tweak, here's something that actually opens the door for a wide array of innovations. Andrew Kerr has managed to connect Cortana to smart home technology LightwareRF, so the Windows Phone assistant can now control your lights and turn them on or off whenever you want.

Already possible on Windows Phone

This is already possible on Windows Phone since Microsoft added support for the INSTEON app in Cortana, but this hack allows the digital assistant to go beyond these limitations and work with many more smart home systems.

Obviously, this is a hack that Microsoft won't recommend and the company could block it at any time with an update, but don't be too surprised if the software giant is actually using it as source of inspiration for future improvements to Cortana.

Microsoft's personal assistant has recently launched on PCs as well, but only in the Technical Preview of Windows 10 for the time being.

Microsoft, however, has promised to make it available on all Windows 10 devices, as the operating system will run not only on PCs but also on smartphones and tablets. Windows 10 is expected to go live in the second half of this year, with Cortana to be one of the key features.