Cortana brings notifications from Android phones to Windows 10

Cortana, Microsoft’s digital assistant, will be bringing notifications from Android phones to Windows 10 PCs from this summer. This will allow users to see and respond to notifications on their phone from behind their PC.

Microsoft discussed the feature at its own developer meeting Build in a session about changes to the Action Center, the notification center in Windows 10, writes tech site The Verge. The feature to view notifications from Android phones via Cortana stems from Action Center In The Cloud, a way to store all notifications online and thus manage them from multiple devices. Therefore, deleting a notification from the PC also works to remove it from the phone.

The feature works on Android and Windows 10 mobile, but not on iOS due to restrictions imposed by Apple. It is not the first time that Android phone users can see notifications on their Windows PC. Apps such as Pushbullet have been able to do this for several years now. It is the first time that it is baked into a service from Microsoft itself.

In addition to the function to manage notifications, Action Center also gets a custom interface, including large pictures in notifications and logos of apps in the header. Those changes will also be visible in the interface for Windows 10 mobile.