Cortana may still have far less skills than its main competitor Alexa, but today the digital assistant is becoming much better at interacting with smart home devices. Indeed, Microsoft has just announced that Cortana is gaining several new home automation skills today, including support for more smart home providers.
“Last October we announced you could use Cortana to manage your smart devices through Samsung SmartThings, Nest, Philips Hue, Wink, and Insteon. Today, we are pleased to announce that you can use Cortana to control your favorite smart home devices from ecobee, Honeywell Lyric, Honeywell Total Connect Comfort, LIFX, TP-Link Kasa, and Geeni,” the blog post reads. “You can control these devices using Cortana on Windows 10, iPhone, Android, and the Harman Kardon Invoke speaker.”
As of today, Cortana can be used to control many types of smart home devices including thermostats, light bulbs and even power plugs, which can let you turn off many appliances all at once. You can configure all your smart home devices in the Connected Home section of the Cortana app on Windows 10 or mobile.
Cortana supporting more smart home providers is one thing, but Microsoft made an even more interesting announcement today: the digital assistant now works with IFTTT, the popular free platform that can get all your favorite apps and devices talk to each other. IFTTT currently supports hundreds of services, and you’ll be able to interact with your favorite ones by creating your own phrases.
“There’s a whole world of possibilities with Cortana on IFTTT,” the company emphasized, and IFTTT support is indeed exactly what Cortana needed to become a truly personal digital assistant. We invite you to check the Cortana channel on IFTTT and get some inspiration with the long list of suggestions for Cortana triggers and actions.
