The Recall feature in Windows 11 was one of Microsoft’s biggest mistakes in recent memory. Microsoft has now confirmed that it will start testing a modified version soon in the Windows 11 Insider builds.
Recall was one of the AI-powered features created for Copilot+ PCs, giving you a visual history of everything on your PC accessible with a timeline and search box. For example, if you can’t remember where you saw an important message or product, you could search for it in Recall. However, the feature was quickly panned by security experts, since the screenshots captured by Recall and its text database were saved in folders easily accessible by other applications. That would be a tempting target for malware, and it also wasn’t clear how much of that information Windows would send to cloud services for processing.
Microsoft announced in June that it would make significant changes to Recall, including encrypting the text and screenshot database, making it an opt-in feature, and requiring Windows Hello authentication for access. The company didn’t finish those changes in time for the first wave of Copilot+ PCs on June 18th, 2024, such as the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x, so it was turned off completely.
The updated version of Copilot will soon be available to test for Windows Insiders, starting in October. The company said in a blog post, “we have adjusted our release approach to leverage the valuable expertise of our Windows Insider community prior to making Recall available for all Copilot+ PCs. Security continues to be our top priority and when Recall is available for Windows Insiders in October we will publish a blog with more details.”
Microsoft has still not announced plans to bring Recall to more Windows 11 PCs. Even when it fully rolls out, where it will hopefully be an opt-in toggle, the feature will only be available on Copilot+ PCs. If you don’t have one of those, you can ignore all of it.
Source: Windows Blog
