Australians currently don’t have access to Cortana on Windows 10… or do they? It turns out there’s a quick and easy way to turn on Microsoft’s voice-activated personal assistant that will take you around 10 seconds. Here’s how it’s done.
Cortana is currently available in seven countries and Australia is not one of them. If you’re in Australia and desperately want to use Cortana now, simply follow these quick steps:
#1 Go to the Start menu
#2 Click on the Settings icon
#3 Select “Time & language” then go to “Region & language”
#4 In the “Country or region” section, change it to “United States”
#5 Activate Cortana from the taskbar menu.
And voila! Cortana is now at your beck and call. We’ve actually tried this method on the Windows 10 laptop in the office and it took less than 10 seconds. Of course, whether it will work on your hardware or be able to understand your Aussie accent is another matter. Let us know how you go in the comments!
Interested in upgrading to Windows 10? Find out if your existing PC is up to task here.
Comments
33 responses to “How To Enable Cortana On Windows 10 In Australia Right Now”
Doing this means you can’t access the app store, yeah?
It may change your access to the app store but shouldn’t disable it completely. You can always change the region back to Australia if you find something wrong. Only takes about 10 seconds.
US store, so you can’t buy, but free apps and updates work fine. My AU apps also update fine. It requires no reboot either to switch stores, however you do have to turn Cortana back on when going back to US.
cant use the app store unless you sign in with some crappy microsoft account bullshit anyway
Just like every other App Store. You can side load apps though, if that’s any consolation
They require you to have an account for their service in order to use their service.
Shocking.
You don’t seem to complain when its Steam or Google Play or the app store, they all require accounts.
Or they could have released a finished product…
Which is why they haven’t released it here. Australian Cortana is terrible.
Seems to work perfectly on my phone, with US settings and my horrible Aussie accent.
Cortana has pretty consistently performed better for me than Siri or Google Now. I moved away from Android partially on the strength of Cortana’s beta. especially in regard to recognising context and natural language. With all the coming improvements, the other two are going to have a lot of catching up to do.
I’ve never found Siri to be much good and although I really liked Google Now, the only thing it has going for it that Cortana doesn’t is a minor few conveniences like knowing when shops close. They’ll come soon enough.
This also works with UK, UK Cortana has a crappy robot English voice though (get used to it, AU Cortana will use the UK voice), a couple less features, but doesn’t change your regional settings to wonky US dates and spelling.
I’ve been running Cortana on my phone for about the last 6 months. You can just change all of the default date, time, spelling, and measurement settings. You can even change your location to Aus and it works fine. It even does a fair job of localising.
I just told my phone I was a US user and then said I was currently in Australia. Works well and I get Jen’s voice instead of the cold, robotic, British woman.
Phone a PITA with store though, unlike desktop you can’t change regional settings without a reboot, so if you need to use the AU store, you have to reboot your phone.
Didn’t work for me on my Surface Pro 3. 🙁 It really bugs me that they totally block the app, we should be able to choose whatever language we like. I’ve had to do the same crap on my Windows Phone. I want to hear Cortana when I talk to Cortana, not some weird robot Aussie voice.
I had to set the US language as default in the area directly under the Country or Region box
Had any luck yet? Surely it can’t be the surface pro?? Same issue
IKR! I wish it worked on my SP3. :(((((((((((((((((
One of the reasons why Cortana isn’t available in Australia yet is because MS is working on a version for Australia due to our accents and Australians prefer a more laid back Cortana instead of a stiff upper lip Cortana like UK (stated by MS lead for Cortana for Australia). I read somewhere that MS has hired an Australian to voice Cortana for Australians and are making it more Australian with it’s searches and local information, which should be good.
I just want to be able to choose my actor, regardless of region. I’ve heard Cortana speak since XBOX IS HUEG was the height of comedy. You can’t just change her like that. Gotta be Jen Taylor.
Will Cortana for Australia still be a female voice?
yes, I believe it will be a female voice, haven’t heard anything about a male Aussie voice yet but who knows. They might do that too
There’s also a setting around there somewhere to ‘recognise non-native accents’, turning that on helped the US Cortana recognise my Australian accent.
So the Aussie Cortana is going to be called Sheila?
Yeah-Na. It’ll be Koylie! 🙂
Followed the instructions step by step precisely, it’s all set to United States region etc., but still can’t turn Cortana on in the task bar menu… 🙁
Did you enable Cortana after you changed the region? It’s on a separate menu access through the taskbar.
My Control Panel – Language is set to English (United States)
My Region / Format is set to English (United States)
My Region / Location is set to United States
My language is set to English (United States) at the top with English (Australia) underneath
But still no Cortana 🙁
Try switching over to the UK. That seems to work for me. 🙂
Yeah I get to the settings area and it says “Cortana isn’t supported in the region and language you’ve selected”, not possible to click the icon to enable it… Region and Language set to United States. No idea why it isn’t working.
That is really bizarre. I did test it on the day the article was published and it worked just fine. I’ll try it again on the test computer tomorrow and see what happens!
Yep, same. I suspect Microsoft has gotten wise to this workaround. I’m sure there’s a way to fake it, but it’s all getting too hard.
“Siri, please tell me why Microsoft makes everything so hard?”
OK, I found this on the web for ‘why Microsoft makes everything so hard’
Okay, that’s it. You’re both shit. I’m going to go outside and remind myself what the sky looks like (when it’s not a desktop background or awesome gaming effect).
Today I changed my Microsoft account profile and set it to United States, and switched off Location Awareness on my Surface and restarted – but still Cortana cannot be enabled due to it not being supported in the region (United States) and language (English (United States)) I’ve selected 🙁
it didn’t work for me either until I changed the time zone to the US. Worked like a charm after that