Have Cortana Wake Your PC by Time and Proximity

Cortana is the only female that makes my wife jealous, and not for the usual reasons. My wife has an Android phone and marvels at Cortana's ability as I use Cortana constantly for scheduling, reading and dictating texts, getting directions, checking caloric content of foods, tracking flights, telling me jokes, etc., etc. Microsoft has a real technology winner in Cortana. At TechEd 2014, many in attendance stated they left craving a Windows Phone after watching some of the Cortana demos.

I knew it wouldn't be long before developers started taking more advantage of Cortana in Windows Phone 8.1. A new app called VoiceWake is a Cortana extension that enables you to remotely turn on a PC. There's two versions: a Lite version and a paid version, and the differences are important.

The Lite version simply allows you to tell Cortana to wake up your PC. Configure Wake-On-LAN for your PC, enter some information about the PC into VoiceWake (nickname, MAC address, IP/Hostname, port number), and you can then say: "Cortana wake " and the PC will boot.

The paid version (only $1.99 and worth it) expands on the Lite version by enabling additional commands which include scheduling and location-based wake-up. With the paid version Cortana recognizes:

You can see how versatile and also how valuable this could be. Think about traveling home and needing to use your computer immediately on arrival, but it takes a few minutes for the computer to boot up completely. Tell Cortana to wake up the PC when you arrive home and your computer will be waiting for login when you walk in the door.

Reports state that Google is working on a similar proximity login technology to be built into Android smartphones and Chromebooks, but why wait? VoiceWake allows you to do this now on Windows Phone and I'm sure this app will only get better and smarter. Plus, you don’t have to worry about Google tracking your every login.

You can locate VoiceWake by searching the Windows Phone store or using the following links:

VoiceWake Lite

VoiceWake ($1.99)