Windows 10: Create Cortana Settings Shortcut in Windows 10

How to: Create Cortana Settings Shortcut in Windows 10


Information Cortana is your cloud-based personal assistant that works across your devices and other Microsoft services. Depending on the capabilities of your device and the version of Cortana you’re using, Cortana can provide a range of features, some of which are personalized. Cortana on Windows is available in certain regions and languages. If Cortana isn’t available for your Windows device, you can still search for files on your device in the search box on the taskbar. Cortana is also available on other platforms, such as Android and iOS, in select markets.

Cortana works best when you sign in and let her use data from your device, other Microsoft services, and third-party services you choose to connect. To provide you with personalized experiences, Cortana learns from certain data about you, such as your searches, calendar, contacts, and location. You’re in control of how much data you share. If you choose not to sign into Cortana on Windows, you can still chat with Cortana and use her to help you search the web, documents stored in Microsoft services like OneDrive, and your Windows device. See the section about Windows Search in the Privacy Statement for more information. If you don’t sign in, or you choose to sign out, your experiences will be more limited and they won’t be personalized with your Cortana data. On iOS and Android devices, Cortana only works when you sign in.

For more information about Cortana, see: What is Cortana - Microsoft Windows

Starting with Settings.

This tutorial will show you how to create or download a shortcut that opens directly to Cortana settings for your account in Windows 10.

CONTENTS:

• Option One: To Download a Cortana Settings Shortcut
• Option Two: To Manually Create a Cortana a Settings Shortcut

EXAMPLE: Cortana settings









OPTION ONE [/i] To Download a Cortana Settings Shortcut
1. Click/tap on the Download button below to download the .zip file below.
Cortana_Settings_shortcut.zip

Download
2. Save the .zip file to your desktop.

3. Unblock the .zip file.

4. Open the .zip file, and extract (drag and drop) the shortcut to your desktop.

5. If you like, go to step 4 in OPTION TWO below to download and use a custom icon for this shortcut.

6. If you like, you can assign a keyboard shortcut to, or move this shortcut to where you like for easy use.

7. When finished, you can delete the downloaded .zip file if you like.





OPTION TWO [/i] To Manually Create a Cortana Settings Shortcut
1. Right click or press and hold on an empty area on your desktop, and click/tap on New and Shortcut.

2. Copy and paste the location below into the location area, and click/tap on Next. (see screenshot below)
*Arrow %WinDir%\explorer.exe ms-settings:cortana




3. Type Cortana Settings for the name, and click/tap on the Finish button. (see screenshot below)
NOTE: You could name this shortcut anything you would like though.



4. Click/tap on the Download button below to download a custom Cortana.ico file to use for this shortcut. Unblock the .ico file, then move it to where you would like to keep it saved at.
Download
5. Right click or press and hold on the new Cortana Settings shortcut, and click/tap on Properties.

6. Click/tap on the Shortcut tab, and click/tap on the Change Icon button. (see screenshot below)



7. Click/tap on the Browse button, navigate to and select the Cortana.ico file from step 4 above, and click/tap on OK. (see screenshot below)
NOTE: You can use any icon that you would like instead though.



8. Click/tap on OK. (see screenshot below step 6)

9. If you like, you can assign a keyboard shortcut to, or move this shortcut to where you like for easy use.

That's it,
Shawn


Related Tutorials

• How to Sign in or Sign out of Cortana in Windows 10
• How to Turn On or Off Hey Cortana in Windows 10
• How to Have Cortana Learn your Voice for 'Hey Cortana' in Windows 10
• How to Change the Name Cortana Uses for You in Windows 10
• How to Turn On or Off Cortana Tips in Windows 10
  

:)

 

Windows 10 commands/shortcuts/env. var.

Keyboard shortcuts to open programs:

Create a shortcut on the desktop to whatever program you want. Right click -> Properties and fill in the field there. Sadly the shortcut needs to remain on the desktop, but you can hide it.

Fun fact: If you had keyboard shortcuts for programs pinned to your Windows 7 start menu, those shortcuts still work when you update to Windows 10.

 

Windows 10 Tweaks

As you may already know, Windows 10 (as well as Windows 8) allow you to log in with a valid Microsoft account, instead of creating a local account that only works on your machine. However, you may prefer to keep a local account for privacy reasons. If you do, though, some Windows 10 features—like Cortana—may not work. Despite the default behavior, the Windows 10 Store is not one of them. You can still log in to your Microsoft account for just the Store without switching to a full Microsoft account. The process, however, is not terribly obvious. To do so, follow these steps:

• Launch the Store from your Start menu.
• Click the user icon next to the search box.
• Click “Sign-in” from the menu that appears.
• Choose “Microsoft account” and log in like normal.
• When the “Make it yours” box appears do not enter your password. Instead, click “Sign in to just this app instead.”

from Lifehacker

 

Creating Shortcuts with Batch File

I've created a Batch file which calls on the following VB Script to be able to create a shortcut to my desktop:

VB Script (named createLink.vbs):
Code: set objWSHShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell") set objFso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") ' command line arguments ' TODO: error checking sShortcut = objWSHShell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings(WScript.Arguments.Item(0)) sTargetPath = objWSHShell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings(WScript.Arguments.Item(1)) sWorkingDirectory = objFso.GetAbsolutePathName(sShortcut) set objSC = objWSHShell.CreateShortcut(sShortcut) objSC.TargetPath = sTargetPath objSC.WorkingDirectory = sWorkingDirectory objSC.Save[/quote] Batch File Example (for Windows Notepad):
Code: @echo off cscript createLink.vbs "C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\Notepad.lnk" "C:\Windows\System32\notepad.exe"[/quote] But after creating the shortcut using this method, I'm not able to assign a custom icon for the shortcut. I get the following error message when trying to do so:





Any help and ideas on what I need to put into the VB Script and/or Batch File to be able to do this would be greatly appreciated! *Big Grin

Also, I know that I can simply do this by going to Start Menu\All Programs\Accessories\ right-clicking on Notepad and selecting Send to\Desktop (create shortcut). Easy enough for creating a single shortcut. But I need to create several multiple shortcuts and using this Batch/VBS method would really save me a lot of time in doing so.

 

How to create a shortcut for a keyboard shortcut.

Hi Marcos,

Welcome to Microsoft Community.

I understand that you are willing to create Keyboard shortcut on Windows 10. I will certainly help you.

I suggest you to follow the steps in the below Microsoft article to create
a keyboard shortcut for an app.

Create keyboard shortcuts to open desktop apps

Note: The troubleshooting steps in the above link are meant for windows 8, however, you can use the same for windows 10 as well.

Refer below article for more information on Keyboard shortcuts.

Keyboard shortcuts

Please post back with above information and we will be glad to assist you further.

Thank you.

 

Windows 10 Tweaks

Privacy tweaks...

• Turn Cortana Off. Bring up the Start menu and start typing. Click on the notebook icon in the left sidebar and choose Settings. From there, you can turn off Cortana.
• Search online and include web results. When you turn off Cortana, you’ll see this option appear. You can turn it off if you’d rather not get web search suggestions from the Start menu, which log your typing and send it back to Microsoft so you can get live-updating predictions, just like you do on Google.com or in Chrome and Firefox.
• Getting to Know You. In Settings > Privacy > Speech, Inking, & Typing, you’ll find a feature called “Getting to Know You”. This is probably the most sweeping privacy setting on the system, and even after turning off Cortana, you’ll have to disable this setting. Just click the “Stop Getting to Know Me” button to turn it off.
• Cloud Info. Turning off Getting to Know You removes info from your device, but you’ll have to remove it from the cloud separately. In that same window, click “Go to Bing and manage personal info for all your devices” to clear the Getting to Know You Data from your Microsoft account.

• If you head to Settings > Privacy > Feedback & Diagnostics, you’ll see two settings:

• Feedback frequency: Windows will occasionally ask you for feedback so you can send Microsoft your thoughts on Windows 10. If you’d rather it not bug you with such things, you can change it to Never.
• Diagnostic and usage data: This feature can send a lot of data back to Microsoft, including how often you use certain apps, which apps you use most often, and memory snapshots (which can inadvertently include parts of a document you’re working on if something crashes). You can change this to Full, Enhanced, or Basic. You can read more about what each of these to here.

Microsoft doesn’t let you turn off diagnostics completely, except on Enterprise versions of Windows. The Basic setting, they say, is data that is “vital to the operation of Windows”, including Windows Update and malicious software protection.


some may be duplicated. I found this info on Lifehacker, if anyone wants the full article.