Microsoft’s AI-powered Recall feature is finally being tested

Microsoft quietly released its Copilot + PC feature Windows Recall to Windows Insiders over the weekend. With the rollout of Windows Insider Preview Build 26120.2415, Windows Recall is now available to users enrolled in the Dev Channel of releases a week earlier than Microsoft initially reported.

Microsoft’s Recall feature has been mired in controversy since its initial introduction with security researchers and users concerned about both the privacy and security implications as well as how they are applied for a platform designed to track all movement on the desktop.

To credit those with early criticism and cynicism for Recall, Microsoft’s initial offer of Recall fell well short of basic security measures, user customization, and privacy practices which forced the company to delay the rollout of its major marketing effort for Copilot + PCs being branded as the Ultrabook replacement.

Fortunately, Microsoft took the criticism and security suggestions of researchers and users alike to heart and rescheduled its AI-powered Search platform for October 2024, roughly three months after the release of the devices it was supposed to help sell. Microsoft used the delayed Recall roadmap to harden Recall’s resiliency efforts while also adding several customization options for users such as blocks on which websites and apps it can record, an opt-in enrollment versus a sneaky opt-out process, and manual controls over the times Recall can and cannot run. However, it seemed that in adding more protections, users customization and additional authentication hurdles Microsoft misjudged how long it would take to get a viable version of Recall out to users to test and had to issue another notice of delay on October 30, 2024, 30-days into the month it was originally rescheduled for testing release.

In the last announcement regarding Recall’s Insider testing window, the company had planned to release sometime in December, but here we are the last week of November and it was quietly added to the Insider preview (KB5046723) with little fanfare from Microsoft.

The new Windows Blog attached to the release of Windows Insider Preview Build 26120.2415 covers many of the same features and updates we’ve previously reported on, and there doesn’t seem to be anything newer added to the platform beyond what has already been highlighted.

Here is a quick reminder of what Recall can and will do over time.

When you open Recall, you can complete the first-run experience, which will ask you to opt-in to saving snapshots. It will also require you to enroll in Windows Hello to confirm your presence. This requires you to enable BitLocker and Secure Boot if you haven’t already. If you don’t enable saving snapshots, Recall will not save any snapshots of your activity.

Find It: Use your PC as you normally would. When you need to find or get back to something you’ve done previously, open Recall and authenticate with Windows Hello. As we use our PCs throughout the day working on documents or presentations, taking video calls, and context switching across activities, Recall helps you find things faster and easier and reduces the strain when you can’t remember something. Search using the clues you remember. You can not only search for the text you need to get back to, but now simply describe what you’re looking for (“pie chart”). You can also browse the timeline to see snapshots from a specific time you remember and get right back to that document or website quickly. Recall’s search results leverage AI to provide both text and visual matches for your query. AI can make mistakes, if the results aren’t accurate or don’t look right, please provide us with feedback using the feedback link. When you’ve found what you were looking for, you can get back to the application, website, or document, or use Click to Do to act on any image or text in the snapshot you found. You can learn more about using Recall here.

Control: With Recall, you’re in control of what snapshots are saved and when Recalls saves them. A new icon in the system tray displays status and provides quick access to Recall actions. When Recall is enabled, you’ll see the Recall icon visible. It provides visual cues to remind you when snapshots are being analyzed and saved. Click the icon and you will be able to pause saving snapshots or view more status information. When paused, you see a slash through the icon.

You can delete any snapshot in Recall that you don’t want and tell Recall to ignore that app or website in that snapshot going forward, either when viewing an individual snapshot or by searching for what you want deleted and removing those results.

Your data: Insiders and Recall users, we want you to know your snapshots are truly yours. We do not send your snapshots off your PC to Microsoft or third parties, and don’t use them for training purposes. Microsoft can’t access the keys to view your encrypted data, so we can’t restore your snapshots if you remove Windows Hello or restore your snapshots if you need to reset your PC or move to a new PC. We will in future updates provide ways for you to store a backup of your keys for these cases. For now, your Copilot + PC only releases the keys to use Recall if you show your face, fingerprint, or PIN. Please note that while in preview, we may make updates that require a reset of your saved snapshots and will let you know here. Technical Insiders can learn more about the security and privacy architecture of Recall here.

Privacy: We’ve updated Recall to detect sensitive information like credit card details, passwords, and personal identification numbers. When detected, Recall won’t save or store those snapshots. We’ll continue to improve this functionality, and if you find sensitive information that should be filtered out, for your context, language, or geography, please let us know through Feedback Hub. We’ve also provided an option in Settings that we encourage you to enable that will anonymously share the apps and sites you prefer to be excluded from Recall to help us improve the product. And you can also choose to exclude specific apps and websites through the Recall settings page which we talk about below.

Settings: Try out the additional settings available to configure Recall. Changing Recall settings requires you to authenticate with Windows Hello. You can disable saving snapshots, pause temporarily, filter applications and websites in supported browsers, control disk usage, and delete your snapshots at any time via Settings > Privacy and security > Recall and snapshots. Please provide us with feedback if additional settings would improve your experience. You can also remove Recall entirely by typing “Turn Windows features on or off” in the search box on your taskbar. Uncheck Recall from the dialog and restart your PC.

Enterprises:  As announced at Ignite, for our enterprise customers, Recall is removed by default on PCs managed by an IT administrator for work or school, as well as Enterprise versions of Windows 11. IT administrators fully control the availability of Recall within their organization. Employees must choose to opt-in to saving snapshots and enroll their face or fingerprint with Windows Hello for snapshots to be saved. Only the signed-in user can access and decrypt Recall data, so although enterprises cannot access employee Recall data, they can prevent Recall from being used altogether and prevent any saving of specific apps or sites. IT administrators can click here to learn more about managing Recall on Copilot+ PCs in their organizations.

Recall (Preview) will begin to rollout on Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ PCs, with support for AMD and Intel-powered Copilot+ PCs coming soon. As we gradually roll out Recall in preview, Recall is supported on select languages including Chinese (simplified), English, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish. Content-based and storage limitations apply. See here for more details. Recall is not yet available in all regions, with expanded availability coming over time.

FEEDBACK: Please file feedback in Feedback Hub (WIN + F) under Desktop Environment > Recall or through in-experience links.

Click to Do (Preview) with Recall

With Click to Do in Recall, you can get more done with snapshots and improve your productivity and creativity. Click to Do recognizes text and images in snapshots and offers AI powered actions you can take on these, saving you time by helping complete tasks inline, and/or quickly getting you to the app that can best complete the job for you.

For text, Click to Do offers the following actions:

• Copy: Easily copy text to your clipboard.
• Open with: Open the selected text with your preferred application.
• Search the web: Quickly search the web for the selected text.
• Open website: Open any URL you recognize on screen in your preferred browser
• Send email: Send email to the email address recognized on screen in your preferred email app

For image, Click to Do provides a variety of options:

• Copy: Copy the image to your clipboard.
• Save as: Save the image to your desired location.
• Share: Share the image with others.
• Open with: Open the image with your preferred application.
• Visual search with Bing: Perform a visual search and surface relevant contents using Bing.
• Blur background with Photos: Blur the background of the image using Photos app.
• Erase objects with Photos: Erase unwanted objects from the image using Photos app.
• Remove background with Paint: Remove the background of the image using Paint app.

In this update Click to Do only works within the Recall experience. In a future update, you’ll be able to effortlessly engage with Click to Do by simply pressing Windows logo key + mouse click, Windows logo key + Q, through the snipping tool menu and Print Screen, or searching “Click to Do” through Windows Search Box. These methods will make it easier than ever to take immediate action on whatever catches your eye on-screen. We’re also working on introducing more intelligent text actions to enhance your experience even further.

As a reminder, Recall is only available for Snapdragon powered Copilot + PCs with Intel and AMD powered Copilot + PCs ‘coming soon.’