Microsoft’s “see everything, remember everything, everywhere, all the time” Windows Recall feature has been controversial since the moment it was announced. While the utility for users is obvious, it’s also easy to see why people aren’t keen to let either their local PC or Microsoft remember everything they do with a visual record. Microsoft seems to have capitulated, at least for business users.
According to a new blog post (spotted by PCMag), Windows Recall will be disabled by default on all enterprise machines. If you want to use it, not only will you need local hardware that meets Copilot+ specs, you’ll need permission from your IT administrator to turn it on.
“Recall will be disabled by default, and IT will enable this feature through new policies before it can be made available to employees for opting in,” says Pavan Davuluri, Microsoft’s VP of Windows + Devices. They’d still really like you to use it, though. The post goes on to claim that Recall will ship with “meaningful security enhancements, including additional layers of data encryption and Windows Hello protection, making it one of the most secure experiences we have ever built.”
This cautious approach to implementing Recall for its enterprise customers is more stringent than the same feature that’s now enabled on consumer Copilot+ machines, but even there, you can turn it off and remove it completely. That’s after a heavily delayed launch that was originally planned for this summer, delayed into October, and finally postponed until “before December” for Windows Insiders.
Considering how we’ve already seen Recall creating massive privacy and security issues, caution seems warranted. Shipping it in a disabled form might make Recall more or less non-existent for enterprise users, which is certainly not what Microsoft was hoping for.
