Featured in this episode of Chaos Lever
Well that was unexpected. By which I mean, very expected and long overdue. Microsoft announced that by the end of this year, Cortana will not be a standalone app in Windows.
This will likely be a relief to the majority of Windows users, many who either 1) don’t know what it is, click on it by accident, and are baffled as to what it’s doing or why, or 2) remove/disable/block/GPO it out of existence on their machine as fast as possible.
To be clear, the technology backending Cortana will still be there, you just won’t access it through an app on the desktop. You will access its “increased AI capabilities” in the remaining Windows apps (like Edge, and uh, some other ones) themselves as part of the Microsoft Copilot branding.
The standalone Cortana productivity assistant will remain available in mobile and Teams deployments, though, so if you get a specific pleasure from uninstalling it… you’ll still have your ways.