After a tumultuous initial reaction and months of reworking, Microsoft is finally releasing the first preview of its controversial Recall feature today. If you’re a Windows Insider with a Qualcomm Copilot+ PC, you can install a new build of Windows 11 that includes both Recall and Click to Do.
If you’re not part of the Windows Insider Program but you want to try out this feature, it’s pretty easy to sign up on the Microsoft website. Recall was first announced back before any of the Copilot+ PCs were released and was meant to be available at launch, but an outcry of privacy and security concerns forced Microsoft to delay it.
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The feature itself is meant to give your PC a “photographic memory,” allowing you to search for anything you’ve seen on your screen using natural language. To make it work, the feature takes constant snapshots of what you’re doing on your PC — and it was the security of these snapshots that got people worried.
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According to the Windows Insider Blog, it seems you will have to authenticate with Windows Hello every time you open Recall — this will certainly make it “feel” secure, but could also get a little annoying. As for how secure it really is, there will hopefully be plenty of security professionals searching through the feature’s updated security and privacy architecture and sharing any issues they find through Microsoft’s Bug Bounty Program.
You can also control which snapshots are saved and which apps are allowed to take snapshots in the first place. Microsoft also claims that it can’t access your screenshots, doesn’t send them to the cloud, and won’t use them for AI training.
The Click to Do feature within Recall allows you to complete actions from the snapshots, such as copying text or saving images. If you don’t like the sound of Recall, you don’t need to worry about it coming to all Windows 11 PCs yet, but when it does, Microsoft promises that you’ll be able to fully uninstall the feature if you want to.
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