Microsoft releases Cortana as a standalone app

Microsoft has put a test version of speech assistant Cortana as a separate application in the Microsoft Store. Disconnecting from Windows 10 will probably allow the company to update the digital voice assistant more often.

Microsoft has put Cortana as a beta app in the Microsoft Store, without any further explanation. Until now, Cortana has been integrated into Windows 10 and for a long time the voice assistant coincided with the search function. However, Microsoft has removed the search function with the recent Windows 10 May 2019 Update and Cortana is a separate assistant in the OS.

It appears that the placement in the Microsoft Store is a step towards further decoupling from the operating system. Updates to Cortana have so far coincided with feature updates that Microsoft releases twice a year for Windows 10. By publishing the app as separate software, the company can update Cortana much more often. The same applies, for example, to Edge based on the Chromium engine, which is now regularly updated as a test version, where the original Edge browser was only updated twice a year.