Microsoft starts testing new Cortana beta app with a new fresh look where you can type or speak to it

After accidentally releasing the internal-only build 18947 to Windows Insiders, Microsoft released a fresh Windows 10 20H1 build 18945 that includes a new Cortana beta app with a new fresh look where you can type or speak to it.

Continue reading this post to know the features part of the new Cortana beta app. You must be an insider in the U.S. region to experience it.

With the release of Windows 10 Insiders Preview Build 18945, Microsoft introduced a new Cortana beta app that brings a better and less intrusive UI. Microsoft said that though it supports most of the Cortana features that already present in the present Windows 10 public build, but not all the features from the previous versions are available just yet.

The existing features include Bing Answers, Assistant conversations, opening apps, managing lists, setting reminders, alarms and timers. The beta version of the Cortana app now supports light and dark themes in Windows, an updated "Less intrusive" screen for the "Hey Cortana" queries and more reliable performance over the existing Cortana experience.

As a Beta, Microsoft is going to add more features over time with updates to Cortana from the Microsoft Store. If you are an Insider in the U.S. and are not seeing the new experience, please be patient as Microsoft is slowing rolling it out to the insiders. Additional markets and languages will become available at a later date.

Apart from this, the new Windows 10 test build also includes improvements to the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2, narrator improvements to provide more efficient reading experience when reading messages in Outlook or Windows Mail, updated File Explorer search experience and other general changes, bug fixes.

A point to note that, just a few days ago Microsoft accidentally released an untested build from the canary branch to the insiders in all rings. That build includes a new Start Menu design, GIF search within emoji panel.

If you have already received that Windows 10 build 18947, Microsoft is recommending to rollback to the previous build and then update to Windows 10 build 18945.