As the latest Windows 10 Preview builds were released, some Windows Insiders started noticing they were getting slightly different flavors of Cortana. And some users were posting screen captures on Twitter of the alterations to Cortana’s UI.
Interesting, Cortana can now display the search bar on top. pic.twitter.com/nA8wq7UqBi
— Chris (@evil_pro_) October 15, 2016
So the folks at Inside Windows dug a little deeper and rounded up the changes they could find. First, they noticed that the search box for some users had been moved to the top of Cortana’s box.
There are versions of the search bar which have either looking glass icon to the left or the search box, or a submit button to the right of the search box. There are also versions of the search box which are either white or one that has an accent color border.
It is not uncommon for tech companies to test multiple variants of one particular thing at the same time. But as of now, there is no discernable rhyme or reason as to which group of insiders gets which version of Cortana. However, the folks at Inside Windows also figured out how to try out the changes yourself with a few clever tweaks to the registry. You can read more about the tweaks here to try out different UIs for Cortana.
