"Hey Cortana" Outside America

[millermk]

Just a note for those of us not lucky enough to live in America and get features, "Hey Cortana" isn't available in Canada officially, and presumably isn't available in some other places as well. However, after flashing the Finland Denim ROM onto my 1520 a while back, I switched my region, display, and speech language to en-us to try out "Hey Cortana". It worked normally then, and I had a but of fun but I wanted to set my phone back to Canadian region. So I set everything back to Canada and decided to forget about passive activation. Anyway today I said hey Cortana because I was trying it out on my computer, and my phone lit up. Turns out that it still works once my region is set to Canada even though it says its off in settings.

Tldr: If Hey Cortana isn't available in your region, switch all your region and language settings to English/American, turn on hey Cortana (and train it for your voice if you'd like), then switch back to your own region without turning the feature off.

 

[xtremez]

I'm in Malaysia, and i left my region as United States. But "Hey Cortana" doesn't seem to work like "Ok, Google".

 

[deebee_433]

Haha. I did exactly this not even 10 minutes ago and it works. It's a hacky workaround considering Canada and Australia are predominantly English speakers, but I've learned to --in the words of Adam Orth-- deal with it.

 

[Harrie-S]

Not sure what you mean by that but see below list for Cortana settings.
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...vailable/1b94c48b-20a4-483f-8aee-3fde582aecd4

 

[Pete]

Hey Cortana is in the UK.

 

[chmun77]

I'm in Malaysia, and i left my region as United States. But "Hey Cortana" doesn't seem to work like "Ok, Google".

Good for you. At least you are already enjoying Denim. There is still no Denim for Singapore.

 

[Lumiana]

Hey Cortana didn't appear with my update so I did a hard reset and then it appeared

 

[Pete]

Hey Cortana didn't appear with my update so I did a hard reset and then it appeared

Same with me.

 

[Lumiana]

I didn't download my old restore back up. I done it like it was my 1st time so that may be why I got it in the system settings

 

[Pete]

I used my previous backup and Hey Cortana came up immediately after restoring the backup and waiting for the apps to be installed.

 

[robnewton]

Windows mobile power user have finally been useful. There's a required settings app for Hey Cortana. Got it working for me.
Hey Cortana | Windows Phone Apps+Games Store (United Kingdom)

 

[xtremez]

What device are you using? The one i'm using a Lumia 535, i think is not country specific so the same device in SG should be the same. Unless you're using an another device that was is pending upgrade then it might take awhile. Our region is an iOS and Android stronghold.