Monday 27 June 2016

How to get Cortana to go back to the lock screen when using "Hey Cortana"

While playing with Windows Phone 10 Cortana's "Hey Cortana" functionality–where you can say "Hey Cortana" out loud and Cortana will show up to help you out, just like "Hey Siri" or "Ok Google"–I was kind of frustrated about getting Cortana to go back to the lock screen when I was done. Eating up battery with a full lit screen seemed like a waste, and if I am using "Hey Cortana" I'm probably not in a position to easily hold down the power button to activate the lock screen.

After trying, and failing, by using various commands like "Bye", "End", "Good Bye", "Go to Lockscreen", "Lockscreen", "Go to sleep", "Sleep", "End program", "End of line"*, "Terminate", "Terminate program", "Kill process", "End process", "Go away", and all of the above and more with various expletives I finally came across the magic one!


"Never mind"

After you have use Cortana for, whatever, just say "Hey Cortana" again and then "Never mind" and you will be back to the lock screen!

Yay!

*Interestingly Cortana will ~correct~ change "End of Line" to "eol"
*Extra points for movie reference ;)