Microsoft Copilot claims it can set reminders. My phone never buzzed

Microsoft has quietly added reminders to Copilot. Well, at least Copilot seems to think so. I don’t.

Windows Latest reports that you can now ask Copilot to set a reminder for a specific task, and the reminder should fire on your Android or iOS phone, letting you know what’s going on.

Reminders, of course, are nothing new — what is new is simply the ability to add one right from your PC, much like Cortana could do way back in Windows 10. Cortana even featured geolocation for a short time, so if you happened to be in the neighborhood of your grocery store, it could remind you to pick up milk or bread.

Copilot is not as sophisticated. But there is a feature within it that does allow you to set a reminder, at least according to Copilot. Simply tell it to remind you at a certain time, and Copilot will agree that it will.

Well, Windows Latest was able to get it to work. Not me.

Unfortunately, my phone didn’t buzz with the notification at the appointed time, and I didn’t receive a notification on my PC, either. Could it have been a connection issue?

I asked Copilot what went wrong, and it offered a laundry list of possible excuses.

I tried again, and Copilot failed again.

At this point, setting a user-generated reminder would be table stakes for a phone or PC a decade ago. And if Copilot is going to say that it can perform a reminder, it should. In 2026, having Copilot promise to do something it can’t do is just another reason that people are beginning to question how much Copilot is being used — and not getting answers. (SimilarWeb says that the Copilot usage figure is about at 1 percent. )

In 2020, Microsoft Cortana transitioned from part of Windows 10 an app, and I stumped it when I asked the answer to “2+2.” At least Copilot can figure that one out.