14 DAY TRIAL // The next big update for Windows 10, which is internally called by Microsoft “Redstone,” will bring significant changes to Cortana and the desktop, with a new report claiming that the company is working on widget-like functionality for store apps.
Cortana will be significantly improved in this update, and a report by The Verge citing unnamed sources reveals that Microsoft is planning to make the personal assistant float around the operating system and show up in different places. This could make Cortana more dynamic, as in the current versions of Windows 10, it can only be accessed from the taskbar or with the “Hey Cortana” voice command.
But with Redstone, Microsoft wants to make Cortana an even more personal assistant, so it’ll show up when working with a document, for instance, to provide you with a number of options, including search features and other tools. This certainly makes many think of Clippy, but it appears that Cortana will be a greatly evolved version of the famous character, with many more features to be offered besides search.
At the same time, Cortana will be available in other places of the operating system and will be able to perform new tasks, such as muting incoming notifications, the aforementioned source notes. Office 365 integration is also very likely, in order to tell users who is working on a certain document.
Widgets could return
With Windows 10 Redstone, Microsoft is also working on a way to improve the desktop experience, and universal apps could also implement widget-like functionality.
This would basically mean that users could pin a specific store app to the desktop and thus have it work like a widget, which would be really helpful in the case of a weather app, for instance. This would certainly make store apps a bit more successful in Windows 10, as widget functionality is currently one of the most requested features in the new OS.
For the moment, all of these are in the rumor stage, and the very first preview builds of Redstone are unlikely to include such features, but we’ll probably see them debuting one by one as the new update is taking shape. According to sources, the debut of Redstone is projected to take place in the summer.