Beginning today, Microsoft will make the contentious Recall feature available on Copilot+ PCs. Those with an appropriate machine and who joined the Windows Insider program may now see a preview of the feature, which is billed as a “photographic memory” for almost everything you do on your PC. It operates by saving snapshots of your activity.
The fundamental goal behind Recall is to increase your system’s search functionality. Microsoft claims that you should be able to find an app, website, image, or document by describing its content (the tool, of course, uses AI). Once you’ve completed the setup, you can open Recall from the Start menu’s All Programs section. For security reasons, you must enable Windows Hello, Bitlocker, and Secure Boot, as well as choose whether to save snapshots.
After that, you can use your PC normally until you need or want to search for something you did previously. Every time you launch Recall, you must verify yourself with a fingerprint, face recognition, or PIN. The function is also totally opt-in, which Microsoft changed when critics expressed legitimate privacy concerns.
Microsoft points out that you have control over the snapshots and can interrupt them at any time. Snapshots can be removed, and you can instruct Recall not to capture any of a specific website or app. The company further states that it will not access your photos, distribute them with third parties, or utilize them for training reasons.
Furthermore, Recall is now supposed to detect sensitive data including PINs, credit card numbers, and passwords. It will not capture or save photos of anything that contains detected sensitive information.
As part of this Insider preview, you’ll be able to test a Recall-powered functionality called Click To Do. This allows you to do actions on text and images in snapshots by holding down the Windows key and clicking on them.
It includes choices often seen in the right-click menu, such as copying text, saving and sharing images, searching for text on the web, and opening URLs (keep in mind that AI is used to detect text and images here). Other AI-powered image functions include background blurring and removal, Bing visual search, and object deleting.
The Recall preview is now only accessible for Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ PCs. Microsoft plans to extend the offer to Intel and AMD-powered PCs soon.
If you want to try out Recall right now (and don’t mind the chance of running into issues on an in-development Windows build), you must first sign up for the Windows Insider program. After that, navigate to Settings > Windows Update > Windows Insider Program and select “Get Started.”
Choose the account you used to join the Insider Program, then pick the Dev Channel and reboot your system. Once your Copilot+ PC is back up and running, navigate to Settings > Windows Update, check for updates, and install Build 26120.2415.
