Microsoft has released its voice assistant Cortana for Android devices in United States, Britain and it is being rolled out to other countries.

Though Google has its own personal assistant – Google Now – and Apple has its own – Siri – they both don’t have features as much as Cortana.

If you have an Android smartphone or tablet and Cortana is available in your country, don’t wait any longer and install this amazing app on your device.

In this article, we’ll guide you how you can install and use Cortana on Android.

Get Cortana:

Go to Google Play Store, search for Cortana and tap install. When you’ll open the app for the first time, you’ll be asked to grant it access to your location, search history, calendar, voice interface and other things.

Tap agree to grant access to required files and then log into your Microsoft account. Create one if you don’t have.

Configure Cortana:

Once you are logged into your Microsoft account, you’ll be asked to enter the name you want Cortana to call you. Also, choose a background colour of your choice.
Tap ‘About Me’ in the Notebook section of the app and put information about yourself.

Tell Cortana about your favorite sports teams, top brands, favorite restaurants etc and provide all other information you want the app to have.

Cortana Features:

Cortana lets you do a number of things. Just navigate to the top left of the home screen and tap on nine dots to open the list of features.

Here are some of the main features.

My Day

My Day is an amazing feature of Cortana which gives you information relevant to your daily activities each morning such as news headlines, appointments, suggested places to eat and drink etc.

This feature is designed to learn what you like and what not, so the more frequently you’ll use Cortana, the more useful it will become.

Reminders:

Cortana lets you easily set up reminders. They help you manage your to-do lists so you don’t forget anything. Microsoft earlier this year added a new feature to Cortana that reminds you when you’ve promised to do something in an email.

Such as, when you make a commitment to your boss, a family member or friend, or anyone else in an email, a reminder pops up on your screen, asking you “don’t forget you mentioned this.”

More Features:

Some other features of Cortana include Alarms, News, Weather and the app can even sing a song for you.