In the era of Siri and Alexa, Microsoft’s virtual assistant, Cortana, hasn’t been that popular. Its user base has been reported as much smaller than its competition, mainly due to it being linked to Windows 10 and Windows Phone. But that isn’t stopping Microsoft from improving it. With the Windows 10 May 2020 Update, Cortana is getting a new look and feel centred around productivity.

It used to be that Cortana was “bundled” with operating system updates, meaning that it only would get new features with major Windows updates. With the May 2020 Update, though, Microsoft has “unbundled” the assistant, and now updates it separately through the Microsoft Store. Hopefully, that means more frequent updates in the future.

For many, the most important part of this change is that Cortana now has a new interface. Compared to before, it’s now much cleaner and more conversational. Instead of depending on your voice to talk to the assistant, you can type out commands, just as if you were in a Whatsapp chat with a friend. Cortana will even help you open apps and other programs on your computer if need be.

Elsewhere, the Cortana window itself is much more compact and can be unlocked from your taskbar and dragged around anywhere on the desktop. It even has both light and dark modes, to match your system settings. Interacting with Cortana now feels just like a thread of text messages. It almost makes you want to use it.

But for all those new features, Cortana’s Halo does glow a bit dim. Microsoft has re-branded Cortana from more of a personal assistant to a productivity assistant meant to help improve the way you work. That means that it no longer plugs in with your smart home devices, nor can it be used to play music. Most of its connected home and other skills command from the Cortana Notebook is also no longer supported.

Instead, Cortana remains focused on common PC tasks like finding files, retrieving factoids, checking the weather, dispensing trivia, or opening common settings pages.

These changes aren't technically exclusive to the Windows 10 May 2020 Update. As far as I know, Microsoft has since backported these changes to older versions of Windows 10 as well. But they were introduced first during the development of version 2004, so I'll highlight them here just in case you missed it. Microsoft has added a few quick searches along the bottom of the Windows Search interface for instant access to frequent web-based searches such as the weather and latest news.

There's also a new Bing image search button that lets you quickly take a screenshot and search Bing for more information. This is good if you've seen an image that you'd like to know more about, but don't know what exactly to search for. Just take a screenshot and have Bing analyze it and provide more information.

Along the top of the search, UI is quick access to your Microsoft Rewards points. You can see at a glance how many points you currently have, and clicking it will take you to the Rewards website to redeem any points you may have. This is super cool if you're an avid user of Microsoft Rewards like I am, as it's an easy avenue for free Xbox Live Gold or Microsoft Store credit.

Virtual Desktops are one of those features that you either use or don't. I often forget the feature exists, if only because it's not something I've been able to fit into my workflow successfully. That doesn't mean the feature isn't useful however, as being able to create multiple desktops for different work environments is a massive deal for many power users. And with this update, the Virtual Desktops have gotten a little bit of love.

These aren't huge changes, mind you, but the changes that are here I think will be appreciated by those who do use them. You can now rename them, and have them save state across reboots. You surprisingly couldn't do this before, so if you needed to restart for an update to complete, you'd lose all workspaces.

Windows Update and the settings app are two key areas in Windows 10, and both are getting some small tweaks to help make both easier to understand. Power users will also appreciate updated settings pages and some new options to help customize your PC.

Similar to the settings panel in Apple’s Mac OS, the May 2020 Update introduces a user profile picture on the top of the settings pane to better indicate whose settings are being changed. There’s also a link to show the status of the OneDrive cloud storage account, and a message to let you know if there are issues with Windows Update. These are sure to be useful for those who might want to check on their PC at a quick glance.

Elsewhere, Microsoft also introduced some new ways to control Windows Update itself. There’s now an additional screen to see optional updates in one place. Driver updates, hardware updates, and things not related to Windows itself will show up there to help you see what you need to install, and what you don’t.

And, for even more control, the settings app will give you more ways to limit the bandwidth used for updates. There are new options to set a precise “Absolute bandwidth” limit in Mbps if you are on a plan with limited data.

Other changes in Windows Settings include an updated Network Status page. Its new design better highlights the data usage and data limits for networks. Smaller changes include the ability to change the colour of your mouse cursor when selecting the text, the ability to sign in to your PC with just Windows Hello and no passwords, and some controls for automatically setting Universal Windows Platforms apps to restart when you sign in.

These are all small changes, but they prove that Microsoft does pay attention to detail.

Task Manager is another area in the Windows 10 May 2020 Update that has seen a couple of notable new additions, one of which power users will find very useful. You can now see your GPU temperature in the performance tab when clicking on your GPU. This only works with dedicated GPUs that support WWDM 2.4 or higher, so if you don't see your temperature inside Task Manager, that's why.

The other notable change inside Task Manager is the ability to see what disk types you are using inside your PC. Underneath each listed disk will now be an "SSD" or "HDD" indicator telling you whether the drive you're using is mechanical, solid-state, or removable storage. This is handy for those who might not know what's inside their PC, and for whatever reason, needs to find that information out without looking up model numbers or opening the PC itself.