It’s taken a while but it’s now totally possible.
If you have been wishing to be able to long press your physical or onscreen home button and have Microsoft’s personal digital assistant, Cortana, show up instead of the Google Assistant then you wish has finally been granted.
Version 2.8 of Cortana, which is now available (see APK Mirror since Play Store access is restricted in Kenya), makes it easy to launch Cortana.
Upon updating, one is prompted to set Cortana as the default assistant, essentially kicking off Google’s Assistant which is the default assistant app for many Android device users.
The only problem is that even with this update that integrates Cortana even deeper in our devices, it is still not possible to launch Cortana via a voice command as is the case with Google Assistant’s “OK Google” hot word.
Users have had to make do with Cortana shortcuts on the home and lock screens. The ability to add a Cortana shortcut to the lock screen was only added at the beginning of March.
A past Cortana update had made it possible to replace Google Now.
