I gave Microsoft Recall another look and was surprised by what I found

Summary

Recall is a screenshot service that captures device activity, offering search and filter options.
Recall prioritizes privacy with blacklisting, sensitive info filtering, and security requirements.
Users can easily access, search through, and manage their captured screenshots using Recall’s features.

In the 1980s, there was this fun science fiction movie called Total Recall, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. As you can read here, I’ve been trialing the Microsoft Copilot Plus-certified Surface Pro 11. Recently, Microsoft re-released the controversial Recall feature to the public. Using it, and the surrounding hype, made me think of one of Total Recall’s oddities, a character named Kuato.

Kuato lives inside of one of the film’s characters, and when invoked, the creature can touch you and see everything you’ve seen. It’s both creepy and interesting, and becomes a plot point that ultimately serves Schwarzenegger’s character well. Like Kuato, Microsoft’s Recall lives in the heart of your machine, and when invoked, it sees “everything” you’re seeing. For many, the privacy issues that surface may be “creepy.” For others, the prospect of easily finding things you’ve been looking at or doing on your computer is intriguing and may sound quite helpful, especially if you’re the forgetful type.

I’ve been using the publicly released Recall preview for a couple of weeks now, and thought I’d walk you through my experience to help you decide if it’s a feature you want to enable.

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The sky is falling!

Or is it? What exactly is Recall?

Screenshot of the dialog box that pops up when you first launch Recall.

Microsoft / Pocket-lint

Let’s get into the nuts and bolts, in a newbie-friendly way, but first, let’s answer this question: what exactly is Recall?

At its most basic level, Recall is an optional screenshotting service that runs in the background, capturing what you do on your device. Those screenshots do not leave your device unless you actively grab and share them. Using a timeline, you can scroll back through the days you were active on your device and see what you were doing. You can also use the search box at the top of the Recall screen to search by name or description, something you’re looking for.

After reading that, I’m sure your first question is, “How does Microsoft keep your info private and protected?”

Without getting too technical, for Recall to run on a CoPilot Plus PC, these are some of the safety/security requirements that must be met:

It needs a powerful neural processing unit (40 TOPs), where some AI processing can occur without needing the cloud.
You must have Device Encryption (or BitLocker) enabled.
You must have Windows Hello enhanced biometric security enabled.

Now, there are RAM and storage requirements that also need to be met, but most users will be more focused on the security aspect. Opt-in and some opt-out security measures are not an afterthought with Recall. In Recall’s Filter lists setting, you can choose which apps and websites are blacklisted from being screenshotted. By default, the screenshotting of sensitive information like passwords and credit cards is turned off, but you are in total control. If you want, you can deactivate sensitive info filtering altogether.

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Not TOTAL Recall

Using Recall in the real world

A screenshot of what Recall looks like when authenticating during launch

Microsoft / Pocket-lint

When you click on the Recall icon or use the Windows + J shortcut, the service will verify that you are attempting to access screenshot content by launching the Windows Hello dialog. You gain access to your timeline by using your face, fingerprint, or PIN. Only you have access, even if you’re using a shared computer.

When Recall opens, you’re greeted by the home screen, which has a search box at the top center and, below that, your scrubbable timeline. You can see dates as you move through, and you can click the Now button to refresh the window and see what you’ve been up to with the most recent screenshots. In the middle of the window, you’ll see screenshots of your activity. Microsoft calls those snapshots.

A screenshot of Recall's action buttons for a Google Chrome snapshot

A screenshot of Recall action buttons from a OneNote snapshot

The bottom of your Recall window is where some interesting functionality lies. From left to right, you have the Jump to button that takes you to whatever source is showing in your screenshot. That could be a URL or an app. Next to that is the Click to do button. If you have this option turned on, the content of your screenshot is analyzed, presenting you with contextual options as you hover over the snapshot.

You can do things like highlight text and then search the web for it, copy and paste an image into another app, or reverse image search an image in the screenshot.

The next button is Copy snapshot. You use that to copy the current screenshot to your clipboard, then you can paste it into other places, like OneNote, for example. The trash can button next to that will give contextual options. In this case, I can delete the current screenshot or all OneNote screenshots from my Recall library. The last button allows you to edit the screenshot with the Snipping Tool.

A drop-down box appears when you click on the three dots at the top of the Recall window. This is one way to access Recall settings. Another option in this dropdown is to pause the service for the remainder of the day.

Using Recall day-to-day has been effortless. I can search for whatever I’m trying to find using either a keyword or a search phrase, and I’ve found it quite intuitive. When you type something in the search bar, you’ll receive the results categorized in two ways: text results and visual results. You have a third option to use your search word/phrase in Windows File Explorer without having to leave Recall and copy/paste or retype that search word/phrase.

In the photos above, I searched “bald head.” Among the results were two images of my bald head. One result came from a photo I uploaded to the backend of a website where I was posting an article I’d written. Notice how my entire head isn’t even in the image, but Recall picked up on it. The other result was from a video I’d uploaded to TikTok via their desktop interface.

To extend this example, let’s say you have a picture of a particular haircut you like and want to find out what it’s called. Or, maybe you want to find variations of it. With Click to Do enabled, if you right-click on the image, the contextual menu in the fourth image. Choosing the Bing visual search option brings up other bald images. They even have skin tones that are similar to my original image. Text-based results with Click to Do enabled provide similar contextual menu options so that you can highlight text and search the web for it, and more.

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For many, the privacy issues that surface may be “creepy.” For others, the prospect of easily finding things you’ve been looking at or doing on your computer is intriguing and may sound quite helpful, especially if you’re the forgetful type.

Remember, this is a “preview”

There may be bugs; proceed accordingly

A screenshot of the Recall settings menu

Microsoft / Pocket-lint

Frankly, from an experiential standpoint, I don’t have anything negative to say just yet. Given more time, that could change as I have the opportunity to stumble upon any issues. From a privacy standpoint, there are some concerns which I’ll address in a moment.

Over the past two weeks, I encountered a peculiar issue: an app I had blacklisted became whitelisted after an update. This occurred with Telegram. When the app updated, it installed a new version alongside the old one, rather than overwriting or removing it. Consequently, both versions coexisted on my system. I then noticed Telegram snapshots appearing in my Recall timeline, despite my previous blacklisting.

I went into Recall’s settings and found that the old version was still blacklisted, but the new version wasn’t in my filter, so I added it. So, while the AI may be smart enough to pick up on contextual information during searches, that intelligence may not yet extend to your blacklists. If Telegram is blacklisted, even after an update, the app should detect the new version through its snapshotting process. It should then either prompt me to blacklist the updated version or automatically apply the blacklist filtering to the latest version.

That also brings up a bigger issue. Part of the sensitive filtering relies on AI to determine what is “sensitive.” If Recall can’t even recognize that an app that I’d previously blacklisted is now updated and not automatically blacklist it or at least ask me if it’s the same app and if I want to blacklist it, then I’d be concerned about what sensitive data the AI isn’t recognizing.

So far, that’s been the only Recall-related issue I’ve experienced. Occasionally, my Surface Pro 11’s Windows Hello camera has an error, and Hello sign-on via facial recognition doesn’t work. When that happens, the system defaults to PIN input. Recall does the same; if the camera has an issue, it will default to PIN entry, too.

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Recall wrapped up

My final thoughts on the experience

The optional Recall feature will be a lifesaver for many users who don’t take the time to set up proper data management workflows. It really is an easy way to find things when you can’t remember where you placed them on your computer or to retrace your steps and find something you were researching but didn’t bookmark.

Yes, there are security concerns, and given how many tech companies, including Microsoft, have violated public trust regarding privacy, those concerns are valid. Microsoft is listening, though, and has, to a great degree, addressed those concerns and provided security-minded features that may help many users trust Recall. Everyone’s threshold for that trust is different, though. That said, it’s tough for me to recommend you use Recall because what we deem “safe” may be based on differing comfort levels when defining what is “safe.” The good news is that you can totally turn off, or never opt into Recall in the first place.

When it comes to privacy, there’s never anything wrong with taking a “wait and see” approach and allowing a company to prove how serious it is about protecting its users’ data.