Microsoft Launches Cortana Beta for iOS

The bad news is that Microsoft has made no announcements about when we might see Cortana made available to all iOS users, so for now we’ll just have to be jealous of the people that are in Cortana’s TestFlight beta.

Cortana for iOS or at least its beta version will offer voice assistance for schedule managing, alarms and reminders and tracking packages, flights or stocks.

As expected, Microsoft has begun to roll out a beta version of Cortana for iOS, the Verge reports. No word on a public release date for the app, but Microsoft previously said it would be coming later this year. Likely, Microsoft was looking to find those who were planning to test the app cross-platform, as its ability to tie together iPhones and PCs is one of its main benefits. For instance, according to Microsoft, reminders can be set on the PC – such as a reminder to collect groceries on the way back home, and this reminder can then be notified via the iPhone when the user is on the road.

While Cortana’s trademark sass is still present, the app will be more limited than its Windows Phone and Android counterparts (“hey Cortana”, for example, is not supported). Basically, Cortana for iOS will challenge Siri, it will even help you get information about restaurants or movies and even open other apps. Apparently only a small number of signed up users got the notification e-mail and were able to download the Cortana app, but more shall receive it later or not at all, giving that TestFlight limited the number of testers for an app to 2000.

The description accompanying the test build for Cortana for iOS explains Windows users having iPhones can connect both the platforms with the help of the assistant.