How to set Microsoft’s Cortana as default voice assistant on Android

It’s been a long battle between personal assistants, but it seems that in the future Cortana will be stealing Google Now’s job as it’s now able to take the coveted position of “default digital personal assistant”.

Google Now can be replaced by Microsoft Cortana on Android but Cortana will not be able to access third party apps on Android phones. Press and hold the home button after the update, and you’ll get the familiar Android option of using either of the two assistant apps either “Just once” or ‘Always’. Thankfully, Windows 10 makes it simple to consolidate and organize your various calendars into a single location via its Calendar app, thus allowing you to keep tabs on your weekly appointments with next to no hassle. However, the famous catchphrase “Hey Cortana” to bring up the search assistant hasn’t received support on Android devices as of yet.

The update is still in beta version, but users can sign-up to test Cortana by taking a short survey on the Windows’ website.

The private beta version of the voice-based digital assistant for Android was launched last month.

Admittedly, hardware limitations currently prevent Cortana for Android from being activated with “Hey Cortana”, so users who value this feature will have to go back to Google Now so they can say “Ok Google” to turn up their digital assistants. The other issue that is still around is that you cannot activate Cortana by saying “Hey Cortana” or anything like that.

You will be asked to sign in to your specified account type: Outlook, Exchange, Google, or iCloud. But, of course this is only beta software, so we can’t expect everything to work right out of the gates.

Microsoft is all set to take on Google with its new Translator app. The new app can be accessed on a variety of devices and supports 50 different languages.

Android owners can get the app from Google Play, and iOS users can download it from iTunes.