Microsoft preparing new change in Redstone update

Apr 20, 2016 05:37 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft has improved Cortana in a pretty significant way in the last updates for Windows 10 PCs and mobile devices, but the company is planning another important change that’ll definitely come in handy to many users out there.

It appears that Redmond will allow Cortana to work without location turned on, as the latest preview build available for insiders already removes this requirement, according to this reddit discussion (via MSPU).

Previously, Cortana could only be used when the location service was turned on, and at some level, it actually made sense, as the digital assistant could only provide a personalized experience by looking at your location. If you didn’t use the location services, however, Cortana couldn’t be turned on, and this undoubtedly made many give up on using the personal assistant altogether because of this.

More improvements still needed, but everyone likes it already

At the moment, it appears that switching languages when the location is turned off disables Cortana, but this is most likely a bug that should be corrected in future updates.

“After switching to Swedish language again, Cortana stopped working. So this language independent thing seems to be a bug. But the region independency and the ability to use Cortana while Location is off, is indeed working after multiple reboots,” the reddit user who discovered the change notes.

“Yay! This worked for me. Never understood why it shouldn't work so I'm happy to see it's a thing now. Time to find out what Cortana can actually do these days,” another one adds, confirming that he never used Cortana before because of the location thing.

While this change is still in preview stage and is only available for insiders running early builds of the Anniversary Update, everyone should receive it in the summer, when Microsoft rolls out the update for retail devices too.

And although it exists on mobile devices for the moment, it’s very likely to be offered on Windows 10 PCs as well, as Microsoft is trying to keep all devices in sync and provide similar experience everywhere.

Thanks for the tip, Jeremy!