Hidden trick enables Cortana on the New Xbox One Experience preview

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By Daniel Rubino
last updated

Though Cortana isn't supposed to be officially available yet on the New Xbox One Experience (NXOE) for preview members, it appears that a pioneering Reddit user has discovered a trick to get the feature working. To enable Cortana, here are the directions given by Reddit user xbxo_zone:

For whatever reason, if you go to the settings tab on the guide, you can move up once. Hit the A button a few times and you will snap cortana.

If those instructions sound a bit vague, YouTuber Aussie Gamer has a nicely laid out instructional video, which we've embedded below:

It sounds strange, but we've tested it out and it does indeed work. As you can see in the screenshot up top and Instagram embed below, Cortana offers up all of the same neat tricks that she does on other platforms, even including the voice-activated "Hey Cortana."

A photo posted by on

If you want to try out Cortana, no matter how rough around the edges it is right now, we'd suggest checking this out as soon as possible. The feature isn't officially supposed to be included in the NXOE until early 2016, and there's no telling how long this will stick around before Microsoft does something about it.

Sources: Reddit, Aussie Gamer (YouTube)

Daniel Rubino
Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central. He is also the head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007, when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and watches. He has been reviewing laptops since 2015 and is particularly fond of 2-in-1 convertibles, ARM processors, new form factors, and thin-and-light PCs. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.