Microsoft’s Cortana digital assistant can search the web for you, help you set reminders or make appointments, save notes, and do many other things. You can use it by typing a request or by talking to you device. And while Cortana debuted as a Windows Phone feature, it’s baked into Windows 10, which means it’s coming to desktop, notebook, and tablet computers this summer.

While it’s simple to access Cortana in Windows 10 by clicking an on-screen button, Toshiba wants to make it even easier: the company will put a dedicated Cortana button on all of its PCs that ship with Windows 10.

toshiba cortana

According to PC World, the Cortana key will be near the top left corner of Toshiba keyboards, near the Fn keys.

Update: Basically the F1 key is now a Cortana button rather than a question mar/help button.

It’ll be interesting to see if other PC makers follow suit… or if Cortana proves a popular enough feature with users to justify the dedicated button. Clearly, Microsoft is pushing Cortana pretty heavily as its alternative to Apple’s Siri and Google’s Voice Search. But will users want the same kind of voice search tools on a laptop that they use on a phone?

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15 replies on “Cortana to have dedicated button on Toshiba’s Windows 10 PCs”

  1. New Win10 Toshiba machine…
    Step-1, Uninstall Cortana.
    Step-2, Install Firefox.
    Step-3, Assign Cortana button to Firefox.

  2. Sweet! The Cortana keyboad button can go right between the Email keyboard button and the Internet keyboard button, and a couple of background processes can run at all times on all Windows 10 PCs just to service the couple of dozen morons that need a Cortana button.

  3. For a feature that only select Markets will even have. Most people, over a year later, are STILL waiting for them to stop fluffing about making poor Jen Taylor voice riddles and jokes, and just roll Cortana out already. It works fine for most things regardless of region.

    1. LoL what about those street cameras or do u live in a third world country ?

      1. Street Cameras can only get you if you go out into the streets tho, as someone working from home and having groceries delivered i don’t need to worry about those…..then again, they don’t need GPS tracking to find me, seeing as there is google wifi hotspot geolocation taken with every google maps vehicle….

  4. I would assume/hope this button could be reprogrammed to some other function. Many keyboards have “special” buttons which can do this or that.

  5. Why not? If you can tell it to, say, “open the powerpoint from last Thursday” or “start a Skype call with Mom” it could be a pretty great help.

      1. Cortana doesn’t get the Hal9000/2001 reference unless you call it Hal, then it responds with “Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore”… Otherwise it’ll either ask which storage type you want to open or open phone settings if it misunderstands what you stated…

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