Fix: Cortana Won’t Hear Me

Cortana is Microsoft’s answer to Apple’s Siri, as late as it may be – Cortana is a virtual Personal Assistant that is designed to assist Windows users in everyday tasks and help them accomplish tasks all over their computer. From searching through all of the files and folders on your computer to scheduling a new event in your daily agenda, Cortana can do it all. Cortana was introduced to the world when Windows 10 came out, and so far, the reception for Cortana has been nothing but positive.

However, quite a few Windows 10 users have been experiencing a pretty bizarre problem pertaining to Cortana – Cortana sometimes doesn’t hear the user’s voice even though the microphone they’re using is completely okay and functions alright with all other programs and applications (such as Skype). Users experiencing from this problem see that Cortana is able to understand them fine when they use the Learn My Voice feature located under Cortana’s settings, but Cortana is not able to make out anything they’re saying when they’re trying to get Cortana to do something.

Thankfully, though, because of the sheer number of Windows 10 users who have suffered from this problem in the past, many solutions and methods have been applied to try and fix the issue, and some of these have even worked for users suffering from this issue. The following are the most effective solutions that you can try if Cortana fails to hear you even though you know that the microphone you are using works fine and you have set up Cortana appropriately:

Solution 1: Check for and install any available updates

There is a pretty good chance that Cortana can’t hear you because of a bug or glitch that Microsoft is not only aware of but has also taken care of in an update. To make sure that any fixes for Cortana are installed on your computer, you need to check for and install all available Windows updates. In order to do so, you need to:

1. Open the Start Menu.
2. Click on Settings.
3. Click on Update & security.
4. Click to Windows Update in the right pane.
5. Click on Check for updates in the left pane.

Be patient while your computer searches the internet for all available updates.

Once your computer is done searching and has generated a list of all available Windows 10 updates, install every single update listed.

As soon as all available updates have been installed, restart your computer and check to see whether or not the problem has been resolved.

Solution 2: Manually set your microphone’s volume levels

Some users have had luck with fixing this problem by manually configuring their microphone’s volume levels. In order to do so, you need to:

1. Right-click on the Sound icon in your system tray located at the bottom-right corner of your screen.
2. Click on Recording devices in the menu that pops up.
3. Right-click on the microphone that Cortana isn’t hearing you on and click on Properties in the contextual menu.
4. Navigate to the Levels
5. Increase the volume to a higher value (70, 80 or 100 should do fine) using the slider.
6. Click on Apply and then on OK.
7. Click on Apply and then on OK in the Sound dialog box.
8. Exit and check to see if Cortana is able to hear you now.

Solution 3: If you’re using a proxy server, disable your proxy settings

Many users who have suffered from this issue in the past have reported that they were only met with the issue when using a proxy server. If you are suffering from this problem and are also using a proxy, disable it and if the proxy server you were using was the problem, the problem will be fixed.

In some cases, Windows 10 computers are set to auto detect a proxy. If your computer is set to auto detect a proxy, you should also disable this option in order for this solution to work.

Solution 4: Switch to a different microphone

If none of the solutions listed and described above have managed to fix this problem for you, there is only one remaining solution that you can try out – switch to a different microphone. Apparently, Cortana just has trouble hearing users’ voices on certain microphones, and if the microphone you are currently using is one of them, switching to a different microphone should get the job done. While switching to an entirely different microphone isn’t the most preferable solution to this issue, it is noteworthy that doing so has resolved this problem for a boatload of Windows 10 users who have had first-hand experience with this issue in the past.