Opening Steam games with Cortana (Windows 10)?

All Discussions > Steam Forums > Help and Tips > Topic Details

Oozekip Jul 30, 2015 @ 12:07am

I've been messing around with Cortana on Windows 10, and I've noticed you can launch applications with it.

I've been able to get various programs such as Photoshop, Notepad++, the File Explorer, GoG games, and Origin games, but not steam games for whatever reason. If I try to open steam games with Cortana it just ends up searching Bing for whatever I say to open.

Does anyone know why this is and if there's a fix for it? I'm lazy and don't want to search through my Steam library whenever I want to play a game if at all possible :P

< >

Showing 1-7 of 7 comments

chiefputsilao✖️ping Jul 30, 2015 @ 12:52am

I'm lazy and don't want to search through my Steam library whenever I want to play a game if at all possible :P

come on?
are you telling us that when you finally figure out how to make cortana run 'everything', cortana will be the one playing the computer? :)

kidding aside, wow!
i did not know cortana can do such things. i thought cortana was just an 'enhanced voice-activated search engine'.

Oozekip Jul 30, 2015 @ 1:17am

Originally posted by chiefputsi:
I'm lazy and don't want to search through my Steam library whenever I want to play a game if at all possible :P
come on?
are you telling us that when you finally figure out how to make cortana run 'everything', cortana will be the one playing the computer? :)

kidding aside, wow!
i did not know cortana can do such things. i thought cortana was just an 'enhanced voice-activated search engine'.

Yeah, it's not super accurate with getting program names all the time (I was trying to open Spore to test Origin, and it kept opening the Windows Store) and it doesn't always open the program you want (again, the Spore example kept opening Galactic Adventures rather than the base game, and saying to open Origin kept opening the Origin Error Reporter), but aside from a few kinks that still need to be ironed out it's pretty cool.

Asking to open RollerCoaster Tycoon asks which one you want to open, 1 or 2 (I have both version on GOG), and you can just say 1 or 2 to pick which one you want to run. That's something that I was really impressed with.

You can also mess with some settings. I can say "Hey Cortana, turn on/off Bluetooth".

Add to that the obvious integration with sending Emails, checking weather and news, setting alarms and reminders, etc.

Some functionality isn't there where you'd think it would be, though. A lot of apps you would think support cortana don't. I'd think I could change my online status or send a message in Skype since its an MS app, for example, and I'd like to see more complex integration so I can, say for example, reset my computer or open directly to a file path in explorer. It seems like something that will be improved as time goes on, though, so I could really see some really cool functionality coming in the future if microsoft continues to improve it.

Last edited by Oozekip; Jul 30, 2015 @ 1:23am

Bad 💀 Motha Jul 30, 2015 @ 2:33am

U can do it this way; but instead of an .EXE u need to tie a voice-command to the SteamAppID and to help ensure that works properly; have Steam Client already running when u do it.

Kittyen Jul 30, 2015 @ 12:40pm

Originally posted by Bad-Motha:
U can do it this way; but instead of an .EXE u need to tie a voice-command to the SteamAppID and to help ensure that works properly; have Steam Client already running when u do it.

How do i tie a voice command to the steamappid?

Last edited by Kittyen; Jul 30, 2015 @ 12:40pm