Microsoft has become increasingly aggressive in pushing people who downloaded their Cortana for Android app to integrate the app into the Android OS, with one of their new features turning the app into rather a nice overlay for reminders on your home screen as can be seen in the screenshot above.

Now unlocking your phone needs to be always as fast as possible, so turning on that element is never a good idea, but Cortana for the home screen is actually pretty slick.

With the overlay, Microsoft concentrates on one of Cortana’s strengths – setting reminders, and slides the sidebar in smoothly from the left when you click on the floating Cortana halo.

After that one tap, the app is also fully gesture responsive, allowing you to slide it further for your news feed, and slide it even more to dismiss.

If you have bothered to download Cortana on your Android phone, you probably owe it to yourself to try out the Home screen integration feature, and I suspect you might keep it around.

If you own an Android device then you can download the latest update from Google Play Store below. Do let us know your thoughts on the latest update in the comments section below.