Microsoft has finally unveiled the much-debated Windows Recall feature, now ready for public testing. I’ve had the chance to explore it using my Surface Laptop 7 ever since the preview was released just last week, and I must admit, my initial thoughts are more favorable than I anticipated. Considering the multitude of privacy and security concerns, along with the delays it faced earlier, this was a pleasant surprise.
I’ve always endorsed the idea behind Recall. Imagine having a built-in OS tool that effortlessly keeps track of everything you do on your computer, making it easy to revisit whenever needed. Essentially, Recall acts like a backup, safeguarding all your activities and data in case something is accidentally deleted or misplaced.
It’s one of those features where you don’t realize its true value until you’re in a bind. Just the other day, while drafting some article, I deleted a few paragraphs I thought I’d finished with. It wasn’t long before I realized that those paragraphs could have been useful for another piece. Fortunately, with Recall active on my Surface Laptop 7, I was able to retrieve and paste those sections back into my content management system without issue.
Recall also shines when you’re searching for something specific but can’t recall the exact details—be it the name of an article, product, website, image, or app. Only recently, I spotted a smartwatch in an online ad that caught my eye, but I didn’t click on it at the time. Later on, I managed to locate it again simply by typing “watch” into Recall’s search box.
The feature is incredibly efficient, providing both text and image-based search results almost instantly. Even when the term you’re searching for isn’t explicitly mentioned in the snapshot, Recall’s able to pull up relevant visual results thanks to its knack for recognizing common items and objects.
The app’s user interface is also pretty intuitive, featuring a main window displaying screenshots front and center, with a timeline you can scroll through at the top. The more screenshots you collect, the longer this timeline becomes. You can navigate back in time easily, with an option for a detailed look at the snapshots taken at various moments.
One of Recall’s strongest assets is its customization. You can specify what kind of content it should capture, and importantly, what it shouldn’t. For instance, if you’re concerned about privacy and don’t want Recall saving snapshots of your financial accounts or personal conversations, you can omit such apps and sites from being tracked by the feature.
Personally, I’ve set Recall to ignore my banking sites, as well as messaging apps like Signal, Telegram, and WhatsApp, so it doesn’t record any data from these. The filtering system is smooth and effective, operating quietly in the background as the Recall feature runs.
All in all, Recall has been a revelation. It’s one of the genuinely productive AI-powered tools I’ve experienced in a desktop setting, running seamlessly in the background and harmonizing seamlessly with the overall OS experience. While I’m generally not a huge fan of Copilot’s previous generative features, Recall (and soon Click To Do) is certainly a tool I can fully support.
That said, it’s slightly frustrating that I can’t sync Recall snapshots across devices. Due to privacy concerns, Microsoft hasn’t made it possible to store snapshots in the cloud, leaving my data spread across multiple devices without any current method to synchronize or consolidate them.
This first preview build does present a few issues, which isn’t unexpected. Setting up Recall involves enduring several hefty downloads via Windows Update before you can actually use it. These updates take a while, and annoyingly, the app doesn’t provide any progress indication.
After downloading, the app won’t just start functioning on its own; you’ll need to close and reopen it to kick everything into gear. Once you get through that, it operates smoothly—though there are reports of some users not seeing any snapshots post-setup, which can be a bit unsettling.
Another minor inconvenience is the frequent need for Windows Hello authentication every time you open Recall. It’s manageable if you only use it occasionally, but for frequent users like me, who access it several times an hour, it gets tiresome quickly.
This issue is more with Windows Hello than Recall itself. Sometimes, it’s a bit sluggish, taking a moment to wake up and scan. Plus, the authentication process requires manually clicking OK, adding an extra step that seems unnecessary.
I understand the necessity for secure scans, but introducing an option to bypass the manual confirmation would significantly streamline this process.
Overall, I’m already finding Recall indispensable. The ability to hop back in time to capture images or text is remarkable and provides a strange kind of freedom. Knowing I can recover essentially anything—be it pages, conversations, pop-ups, alerts, or images—is incredibly reassuring.
Windows Recall is currently available for preview on Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ PCs. Intel and AMD-powered Copilot+ PCs are expected to receive this support shortly, with a broader rollout anticipated in early 2025 for all Copilot+ devices.
