Goodbye, Cortana (2023)

Cortana

Microsoft is killing off support for Cortana on Windows. According to a support document published on Friday, the app – which you probably haven’t used after it was first introduced – will be removed starting later this year.

The news follows the Microsoft Build annual conference, where the company announced its new Windows Copilot tool. The tool, which lives in the taskbar below, will supposedly do everything Cortana could do once it’s widely released. This includes changing settings, summarising content, answering questions, and more.

Cortana’s demise has been inevitable. First introduced with Windows Phone 8.1 back in 2014, the AI assistant launched on desktop with Windows 10 and started showing up everywhere – from the system to apps like Office.

However, when Cortana failed to catch on, Microsoft gradually started phasing Cortana out over the years. The assistant lost its prominent position on the taskbar with the release of Windows 11 and was only available as a standalone app. Microsoft also retired the app on iOS and Android in 2020.

Right now, there’s no definitive date for when Cortana will be removed from Windows. But Microsoft is directing users to try out some of the other resources including Voice access in Windows 11, the new Bing, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and Windows Copilot.

The company has also clarified that the removal of Cortana from Windows does not impact its availability on other platforms like Outlook mobile, Teams mobile, Microsoft Teams display, and Microsoft Teams rooms.