14 DAY TRIAL // Last week at the Build 2016 developer conference, Microsoft announced that soon it would be possible to enable Cortana on the Windows 10 lock screen and thus have the personal assistant perform tasks without even unlocking the computer.
Build 14316 is the first to bring this feature, but keep in mind that this is just a preview version of the upcoming Anniversary Update and it’s only available for fast ring users.
Furthermore, it’s not enabled by default, so in order to enable it, some small registry tweaks, first revealed by Twitter user @tfwboredom (via MSPU), are needed on computers updated to this version.
How to enable it
First and foremost, make sure that Hey Cortana is enabled. To do that, open Cortana and click on Settings. Look for the option that says “Let Cortana respond when you say ‘Hey Cortana’” and turn it on.
Then, open the registry editor by clicking the Start menu and typing regedit.exe and navigate to the following path:
HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Speech_OneCore\Preferences
Right-click the side panel and create a new DWORD value called VoiceActivationEnableAboveLockscreen. Set its value to 1 and close the registry editor. Reboot your computer, and when you log back in, Cortana should be available on the lock screen already.
In the future, this option will be enabled by Microsoft by default and the company isn’t doing this already because there still are some bugs in the way the personal assistant works on the lock screen.
At this moment, Cortana is rather slow on the lock screen and animations seem to be rather laggy, while in some cases, the “Hey Cortana” command doesn’t seem to be recognized correctly.
Without a doubt, there’s still room for improvements here and Microsoft is still working on the feature, and significant tweaks should be made in the next builds. Cortana on the lock screen should be here for all users in the Anniversary Update coming this summer.