All the fear and loathing about Microsoft's Recall feature for Copilot+ PCs seems overblown to me. And, besides, the few positive reports are more intriguing, anyway. That's why I decided to try Recall on my Snapdragon-based Copilot+ Surface Laptop running Windows 11. In case you're just catching up, Recall lets you search and page through your PC activities in a timeline, and take actions on the content with AI. I'm here to walk you through how to set it up and give you my first impressions on how well it works.
First, a Word About Security
As mentioned, I consider the security concerns about Recall to be mostly exaggerated. For example, one writer stated that because his partner guessed his laptop PIN, she was able to access Recall. My take is that if someone has your PIN and physical access to your computer, they are going to get access to most everything on the PC anyway, regardless of whether Recall is running. As for the fear related to Recall's local, AI-based analysis of screenshots, I have one issue that I will discuss a bit later.
In response to the above concerns (and others), Microsoft delayed Recall multiple times to beef up security and privacy. It made Recall completely opt-in and end-to-end encrypted (not even Microsoft can access your Recall data), and added a biometric sign-in requirement. PCMag senior reporter Michael Kan quoted Microsoft security executive David Weston on the topic, "Recall uses an advanced version of Windows Hello designed to prevent malware from spoofing a user's facial scan through the PC's camera." Finally, Recall uses a dedicated and separate virtual machine, so malware on your PC can't access it.
Recall doesn't record sensitive information like passwords and ID numbers. It also filters sites you visit in private browser sessions out of its snapshots. That's all well and good, but I say, "Why Bother?" If the information is already secure, why shouldn't you be able to access it?
Getting Started With Recall
Microsoft has already started to roll out an update for Copilot+ PCs that includes Recall. After your PC receives and installs the update, it will be obvious that the new feature is available after you restart your system. You might need to manually check for updates to get it, and it helps to click the box next to "Get the latest updates as soon as they're available."
After I downloaded the update and restarted, the screen below appeared on my Surface Laptop (I had to take a photo with my smartphone since Windows didn't let me take a screenshot):
I naturally chose "Yes, save." If you choose not to move ahead with setup at this point, you can always turn Recall on in Settings. Next, a message appeared in the bottom right, urging me to continue the Recall setup process by using Windows Hello, Microsoft's biometric authentication technology.
After that, a screen explaining how Recall works and how you can use it popped up.
Recall places an icon in your taskbar's System Tray from which you can access the feature, pause snapshots, and tell it not to record certain apps and websites.
After one more set of screens explaining that Recall uses AI, is still in preview, and lets you copy text and images, you get a final chance to opt out.
If you hit Continue, it's time to authenticate with Windows Hello.
This is it -- this is the moment! A rather beautiful window takes over the screen and clearly tells you that the feature has started taking snapshots of your PC activity.
From the aforementioned System Tray icon, you can change some settings related to privacy and storage for snapshots. You can set a maximum storage limit, for example; the default is 150GB, which seems high. You can also set a time limit for snapshot storage. The default is Unlimited, but you can choose between 30, 60, 90, and 180 days.
As for the privacy settings, I appreciate that "Filter sensitive information" is on by default. That information includes credit cards, ID numbers, and passwords.
What's It Like to Use Recall?
You access Recall from its taskbar icon, and you need to authenticate with Windows Hello biometrics (usually face or fingerprint) whenever you open it. Tapping the back and forward arrow keys steps you through your snapshots. Swiping side to side on the touchpad does the same. Alternatively, you can click the arrows to the left and right of the snapshot image to move through them one at a time. Or you can hover the mouse cursor across the timeline at the top to scrub through your Recall snapshots.
If you see a snapshot you don't want in Recall, you can click the trashcan icon below it. That same drop-down button lets you block all future snapshots of any content from the app or site. From this menu, you can open the app the snapshot is from, copy its URL if it's a website, or edit the snapshot image (primarily by cropping or marking it up) in the Snipping Tool.
Choosing to remove all WhatsApp info from Recall worked in testing -- I didn't see my WhatsApp snapshots after that. But you should know that that's different from blocking the app; the prior action just removes all existing WhatsApp snapshots. You need to go back to the Recall section of Windows Settings to completely block an app or site.
Click to Do Is the Secret Sauce
I'm sorry to disappoint the Recall haters, but Recall is super cool, largely thanks to Click to Do. You not only see images and documents you worked on, but any clickable content -- such as words and images in a snapshot -- appears with an animated, colorized highlight as you hover over it. Here's a brief video of what that looks like:
Microsoft recently added even more capabilities for Click to Do, including the ability to create bulleted lists and send highlighted objects or text directly to Copilot for summarizing and explanation. In the works are two more features: one for scheduling meetings, and a reading coach for language practice. Here are the actions currently available for a text document:
You can turn Click to Do off with a control at the bottom of Recall's pane, but why would you? You lose all that glorious animation and functionality. You can still open the apps, File Explorer windows, and websites that Recall finds with Click to Do off, however.
Click to Do isn't a Recall exclusive; it's available throughout the rest of a Copilot+ PC's user interface; you can tap Windows Key + Q to see it in action. It wobbles the screen image in areas your cursor is over and then highlights anything actionable. Look for a deeper dive on Click to Do in an upcoming article.
Searching Inside Recall
Search is another key part of the Recall experience. It uses on-device AI models in the Copilot Runtime to detect text and objects within images, as well as search for actual text in webpages or documents. One of the models, AI Text Recognition, performs what's known as optical character recognition (OCR), but the NPU makes it faster and more reliable, according to Microsoft's documentation.
Recall lets you search by typing in its search box at the top or with your voice when you tap the mic icon (I wish Windows Search had this, too!) When you search, results appear in two groups: text matches and visual matches. Some results appear in both groups. If you search for "tree," for example, you might have a snapshot that contains the text "tree" and has a picture of a tree.
It's better to type as little as possible when you are searching for some activities. Instead of "What was the conversation I had with Greg last week about?" Just type "Greg," or else you get a bunch of other conversations. As you can see in the video above, I didn't have any trouble finding references to "warbler" in my snapshot history. And after running Recall for a few days, the search got better.
Searching for documents such as Word files or Excel spreadsheets worked mostly fine, though the feature isn't semantic enough to bring up Excel documents when I searched for "spreadsheet." Another shortcoming makes Recall less useful than the discontinued Windows Timeline feature: Recall doesn't take you directly back to the document it found. Instead, it merely offers to open the app. (Microsoft is working on adding this capability, which has appeared in preview builds of Windows.) Web pages are another story; Recall takes you right back to the site.
Blocking Sensitive Content
I'm disappointed that Recall didn't take more snapshots at points. For example, it didn't include a Word document I had been working on -- pretty important for searching for past work! But it turns out there was a good reason for this. As a test of the feature's privacy settings, I had added this line to the document: "My social security number is xxx-xx-xxxx," replacing the x's with fake numbers. That was enough for Recall to block the document from its snapshots.
For another test of how Recall handles private content, I logged into my bank account. The site showed my account number, so this activity didn't appear in Recall snapshots when I checked later. I also went to the donation page of my alma mater. The credit card number I entered there didn't appear in Recall. The last four digits of cards, however, did. That's something to be careful about because some sites verify you with those last four digits.
For a final test of blocking private data, your intrepid PCMag analyst navigated to a site he's completely unfamiliar with -- Pornhub. I regret to report that no blocking occurred and that lurid images from the adult website's homepage appeared right there in my Recall snapshots. The "Filter sensitive information" option apparently applies only to things like bank account, credit card, and ID numbers. But, as discussed above, it's easy enough to prevent any sites from appearing in Recall snapshots by adding them to the "Websites to filter" section of Recall's Windows Settings section. Copilot Vision, for comparison, shields its prudish eyes from adult sites. The reason? It sends data to Microsoft servers rather than keeping everything on-device.
As mentioned at the outset, Recall doesn't record private browsing sessions. I confirmed this with my two browsers of choice, Edge and Firefox. Recall also didn't record any panels from my password manager either, whether I was in a private or regular browsing session.
One case where privacy could be a concern has less to do with you than those you interact with. If you have a private conversation with someone else on Signal and they are running the app on their Copilot+ PC with Recall active, it will record your conversation, or at least a snapshot every few seconds. But someone could just as easily save screenshots to any device, of course.
Don't Fear the Recall
I've only been using Recall for a short while, but I can see great potential for productivity, especially if you go through a lot of information on a weekly basis and don't have a photographic memory. This is your photographic memory.
Of course, many old-school Windows users will, out of fear and loathing, never try Recall. Ditto for those who shun anything with a whiff of AI. Nothing I write here will change those minds. There are indeed reasons that some people shouldn't use it: Those who engage in super-secret conversations should probably steer clear and avoid communicating with people who use Recall, for instance. That said, Microsoft has locked it down. And unlike Apple Intelligence, which sends data to the company's servers, everything in Recall stays local.
If you decide to try Recall, it might actually dazzle you. Its Click to Do features, in particular, are like nothing I've seen on a computer before. Yes, there are still shortcomings, like the inability of Recall to take you right to a document you were working on. But improvements and more capabilities are surely coming. Stay tuned for my future coverage as Recall evolves.
