When Microsoft announced the Windows 11 Recall feature for Copilot+ PCs in June, it was immediately met with backlash and controversy. The company quickly pulled it and promised to work on the feature.
Today, Microsoft announced that Recall is coming off the bench — but there are some caveats. You need to be a Windows Insider on the Dev Channel and own a Copilot+ PC powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite or Snapdragon X Plus chipset in order to access the preview of Recall.
As a reminder, Recall is a tool that is meant to help you quickly find apps, documents, images and websites on your PC using conversational language. As originally envisioned, Recall would take searchable snapshots of your PC desktop at regular intervals, which is where the security concerns came in. In September, the company put out a blog post outlining how it's tackling security and privacy as it works to revamp Recall to be safer.
From today's announcement, it appears Recall still takes snapshots, but only if you have enabled saving screenshots. Further, Microsoft claims that Recall requires biometric authentication via Windows Hello (that is, you have to use something like a fingerprint reader or webcam to prove you're you) to work, and that you can dictate when and where Recall saves snapshots.
The company claims that Recall will not send snapshots off of the PC to Microsoft or third parties and won't use them for training. The announcement says that the company also "can't access the keys to view your encrypted data, so we can't restore your snapshots if you remove Windows Hello or need to reset your PC or move to a new PC."
Additionally, Recall has reportedly been updated so that it can detect sensitive information like credit card details and passwords. If it detects that information, it won't save or store those snapshots.
Click to Do
Alongside Recall, Microsoft announced a new feature for Recall called Click to Do. This feature "recognizes text and images in snapshots" and offer you contextually relevant options for whatever you click on, including copying text, searching the web based on the text, opening websites, sharing images, blurring backgrounds in the Photo app or erasing objects.
For now, Click to Do only works within Recall but Microsoft says that eventually it will be a standard AI feature available throughout Windows. Like the preview of Recall, Click to Do is only available to Windows Insiders in the Dev channel who have Snapdragon-based Copilot+ PCs.
Here's how to access Recall (Preview) and Click to Do if you meet the requirements:
- Go to Settings - Windows Update - Windows Insider Program
- Tap 'Get Started'
- Link the Windows account you signed in with, make sure its the same account you registered with Windows Insider
- Choose the Dev Channel and then reboot
- After rebooting, go to Settings - Windows Update. Check for update and look for Build 26120.2415
- Download the update, your PC will reboot to finish the update process
You should be aware that this is more or less a beta and there are known bugs with Recall.
These include Recall not working with "some accessibility applications" (Microsoft did not specify which ones), delays in feedback submissions, delays in seeing Snapshots (though a reboot is supposed to solve this) and ensuring that Secure Boot is enabled to save snapshots.
