Cortana isn’t officially coming to Xbox One until 2016, but some of you can try it out right now.
Some gamers were bummed to find out that Microsoft won’t officially launch its Cortana voice assistant for Xbox One with the New Xbox One Experience update in November (read our hands-on with NXOE right here). The company even said in a blog post that it will add Cortana for preview members “later this year,” but it turns out that the feature is actually hidden in the current build of New Xbox One Experience preview.
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If you are already in the New Xbox One Experience, here’s how to unlock Cortana:
- Hit the Xbox button twice to bring up the guide.
- Navigate down to settings (which is the gear symbol).
- Press left to enter the settings options.
- Press up until none of the words in the menu are highlighted. You should only need to press up once.
- Now, hit the A button on your controller a couple of times.
- The Xbox One should automatically take you to the Cortana app to set it up.
Again, this is all early stuff, and Cortana doesn’t really have many of the functionalities that it has on PC. For example, you can’t add stuff to your to-do list. But this is a chance to get an early glimpse at what the feature will look like when it launches in the next few months.