Microsoft Starts Testing ‘Hey, Copilot’ Wake Word on Windows 11 PCs

Microsoft is rolling out an update to Copilot that brings the “Hey, Copilot!” wake word on Windows 11. You will be able to say “Hey, Copilot!” to start a conversation with Copilot in hands-free mode. You will see a Copilot microphone on your screen, and now you can ask a question to get an instant response. After replacing Cortana and its voice command “Hey, Cortana”, Windows 11 is now getting its new voice command.

To end the conversation, you can click on “X”, or Copilot will automatically end the call after a few seconds if there is no interaction. By the way, you can also ask questions in a single flow by saying something like, “Hey Cortana, how is the weather this weekend?”

The new Copilot update (version 1.25051.10.0 or later) is rolling out to Windows 11 Insiders across all channels. You can update the update via the Microsoft Store. The new “Hey, Copilot!” wake word is not enabled by default, so you will have to open Copilot’s Settings and enable the toggle under Voice mode. Note that it only supports the English language, as of now.

Microsoft says that when “Hey, Copilot!” is enabled, it uses an on-device “wake word spotter” to only detect this voice command locally. Once the conversation is initiated, your voice interactions are sent to the cloud for processing. Bear in mind that your PC must be unlocked to use the Copilot voice command.

Just recently, Copilot received a “Press to Talk” option that allows users to invoke Copilot by pressing “Alt + Space” for two seconds. Besides that, Microsoft introduced an AI agent for Windows Settings and announced several new AI features for Windows 11. Going forward, expect many of these AI features to come to Windows 11, but you need a Copilot+ PC to experience most of the features.