Now Cortana can't play music if phone is locked, needs to be fixed

[fdruid]

I've had a problem since the last update for production (or at least that's when I noticed it, could be the last couple of updates).

In the car, through bluetooth, and with headphones, I asked Cortana to play music and the screen now says that I have to unlock the phone. Actually the same happens in any way to invoke Cortana, though it's obviously more noticeable in those cases.

This is INSANELY wrong, as I obviously couldn't reach and perform the Hello check or punch my password while I'm driving or when the phone is in my pocket. Before this, in the exact same situations the phone would just play my requested music without unlocking it.

I don't know why this changed but this needs to be fixed ASAP. It makes no sense from a security standpoint, since you still can send messages and call people without unlocking the phone, or do all the rest of the Cortana commands, but you can't play your music? As if it was a security risk or something.

I hate it when they break things that were working before. They better fix it, can anyone tell me if this works right in the newest Insider builds???

 

[staticdisaster]

I'm with ya, it stopped during the weekend for me, and I don't feel like switching to Fast or slow. Guess there's Feedback Hub to check.

 

[staticdisaster]

What's funny is that there hasn't been a system update to my phone in a month.

I think its a problem with the whole cloud system Cortana is depended on now.

 

[staticdisaster]

Groove was updated on my phone on Jan 30th though. Perhaps its a Groove bug.

 

[seventeenapg]

I am with you on this too. I am running 15025 and yes Cortana will not work as you say. I have the phone in a charging holder on the windscreen and, really, I still don't want to have to punch in my 4 digit code to unlock the phone to play music. It should absolutely be the case that Cortana will respond to the command even though the phone is locked and asleep. If necessary MS should put in an option within Cortana settings to allow Cortana to wake up and unlock the phone.

Its really annoying and I have mentioned this in the feedback hub before.

 

[fdruid]

I am with you on this too. I am running 15025 and yes Cortana will not work as you say. I have the phone in a charging holder on the windscreen and, really, I still don't want to have to punch in my 4 digit code to unlock the phone to play music. It should absolutely be the case that Cortana will respond to the command even though the phone is locked and asleep. If necessary MS should put in an option within Cortana settings to allow Cortana to wake up and unlock the phone.

Its really annoying and I have mentioned this in the feedback hub before.

We need to know whether this is fixed in the Fast ring builds, an update for Production is probably coming soon. But we must make people aware of this, it's pretty serious.
I couldn't find your article, can it be linked? I'm on a different language/region.

@staticdisaster It could well be a Groove bug, it's hard to tell.

 

[madcursor]

Microsoft keeps trying these experiments to figure out good features, but most of the time they back fire. This behaviour may make sense if there was a trusted voice system in Cortana (like in Google assistant) but at this point this is a bug, not a feature and hope it gets fixed soon.

 

[fdruid]

Microsoft keeps trying these experiments to figure out good features, but most of the time they back fire. This behaviour may make sense if there was a trusted voice system in Cortana (like in Google assistant) but at this point this is a bug, not a feature and hope it gets fixed soon.

there should be a trusted voice system for Cortana, as you say, that's another point here. But certainly, they can't do this without implementing it.

 

[seventeenapg]

We need to know whether this is fixed in the Fast ring builds, an update for Production is probably coming soon. But we must make people aware of this, it's pretty serious.
I couldn't find your article, can it be linked? I'm on a different language/region.

@staticdisaster It could well be a Groove bug, it's hard to tell.

I am on the fast ring and have just downloaded 15035 and it's just the same. Cortana rarely responds to the command. Most times I have to tap the search button to get it going. Not good enough!

 

[fdruid]

Go try it right now, it's insane. Now she won't recognize my command to ask for music and shows search resulta for it. And while trying to send an SMS, she ended up sending a "quick email" or something. With the exact same request that I use in an SMS.
So, is this whole crazyness all in the back end??

 

[staticdisaster]

I do notice when I say 'play music', part of the Bing webpage's menu bar shows up when Cortana says "Playing music on Groove", then telling me to unlock my phone.

 

[fdruid]

I fear this issue might go on unchanged if we don't take action.
It's hard to understand how such a basic feature of Cortana, or rather, of expected use for any smartphone, has been broken this badly and ignored.

So I propose we look for ways to make this problem more visible to the developers. Let's compile every link to an existing report, and let's report it on higher profile sites. Uservoice, for example? I've never used that.

Any ideas?

 

[staticdisaster]

I fear this issue might go on unchanged if we don't take action.
It's hard to understand how such a basic feature of Cortana, or rather, of expected use for any smartphone, has been broken this badly and ignored.

So I propose we look for ways to make this problem more visible to the developers. Let's compile every link to an existing report, and let's report it on higher profile sites. Uservoice, for example? I've never used that.

Any ideas?

Just for kicks I hard reset my 640. Of course it works perfectly in Windows Phone 8.1.

Did the upgrade to Windows 10, an older release. Cortana worked perfectly with Groove without having to unlock.

Updated to the latest Release Preview, and it worked initially, but then Groove was updated and I'm having to unlock my phone when I ask Cortana to play music.

It's funny that it hasn't been fixed yet.. somebody at Microsoft has to be using Groove in their car while driving and came up with this error right?

 

[fdruid]

Just for kicks I hard reset my 640. Of course it works perfectly in Windows Phone 8.1.

Did the upgrade to Windows 10, an older release. Cortana worked perfectly with Groove without having to unlock.

Updated to the latest Release Preview, and it worked initially, but then Groove was updated and I'm having to unlock my phone when I ask Cortana to play music.

It's funny that it hasn't been fixed yet.. somebody at Microsoft has to be using Groove in their car while driving and came up with this error right?

Heh, clearly they haven't, and they haven't noticed. Or the worst case scenario is that they're crazy and this is on purpose. To be honest I'm not to keen on having to unlock the phone after asking Cortana for driving directions WHILE DRIVING. Insane, this must be thought better.

 

[staticdisaster]

Welp... decided to upgrade my 640 to Fast Ring in hopes of Groove working while phone unlocked and now everything works like it did before. No idea if it was Cortana or Groove that was the culprit, but apparently its fixed in Fast Ring at least.

 

[Ryujingt3]

I am on the fast ring on my 950XL and sometimes music still stops playing when the phone is locked. I think it is more Groove related than Cortana.

 

[fdruid]

Welp... decided to upgrade my 640 to Fast Ring in hopes of Groove working while phone unlocked and now everything works like it did before. No idea if it was Cortana or Groove that was the culprit, but apparently its fixed in Fast Ring at least.

Which build number would that be? I want to know so I look up if the issue is in the list of fixed bugs.

 

[fdruid]

I am on the fast ring on my 950XL and sometimes music still stops playing when the phone is locked. I think it is more Groove related than Cortana.

Yeah, this sounds like a different issue than the one we're discussing here. That's probably Groove crashing, not related to Cortana or the phone's locked state.

 

[fdruid]

Today we got Cumulative Update 14393.953 and guess what, it's NOT fixed...

See the comments here on how a guy thinks it's ok to have that "security feature" (pitch in to support our cause while you're at it, heh)
Microsoft rolls out Windows 10 Cumulative Update 14393.953 to production for PC and Mobile | Windows Central


It's really sad that Microsoft makes these blunders.

 

[fdruid]

Any hope this gets fixed for Creator's Update, guys?