Windows 10 gets support for Alexa in lock screen

Microsoft is working on a way to implement smart assistants in Windows’ lock screen. In the beginning, it’s all about Amazon’s Alexa. Users can thus also control their PC by voice when it is on standby.

The changes are in the new Insider Build of Windows, Microsoft writes in the changelog of version 18362.10005. There it says in a somewhat tucked-away sentence that there will be support for ‘digital voice assistants from third parties’ in the lock screen. For now, the feature is only in the Slow Ring of the Insider Builds. It is now being rolled out to users.

Although Microsoft talks about voice assistants in general, in practice it only concerns one assistant. Amazon’s Alexa is the only other assistant that currently has support on Windows 10, in addition to Microsoft’s own Cortana. However, Alexa can only be used if the computer is unlocked. Microsoft introduced its own smart assistant as standard in Windows 10, but its popularity has since declined and functionality has slowly moved from opt-out to opt-in. Alexa is also an opt-in feature that users must enable themselves for the time being, and Amazon must first update the smart assistant for it.

In addition to the assistant support, the Windows 10 preview also gets a few other features. This mainly concerns security features such as key rolling to make the issuance of recovery keys more secure, and Windows containers are better separated from each other.