You can now shout ‘hey Cortana’ to wake up the Surface Studio

Microsoft is making its first big update to the Surface Studio this week. A new audio driver, available on Windows Update, will now let Surface Studio owners wake their machines simply by saying “hey Cortana.” The new wake functionality is something that Intel’s Skylake processors have long supported, but the Surface Studio is one of the first to support waking from what Microsoft calls a “modern standby” state with the voice command.

Microsoft has started supporting this wake functionality as part of the recent Creators Update to Windows 10, and the software maker is planning to enable this Cortana wake functionality in new devices from partners this year. Harman Kardon announced its Cortana-powered speaker last year that will take advantage of Cortana's wake from sleep mode, and it’s the first of many devices that will compete with Amazon’s Echo range.

Microsoft’s Surface Studio update also arrives just as the all-in-one PC debuts outside of the US. The Surface Studio launches in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand today, alongside the updated Surface Book with performance base in Austria, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.