Brad Linder<p><strong>Windows Recall is ready for testing (on select PCs)</strong></p><p>PC makers have been touting the AI capabilities of PCs for the past year or two, noting that the powerful neural processing units built into the latest Qualcomm, AMD, and Intel processors deliver support for on-device AI capabilities like eye-correction, auto-framing, and enhanced background blur in video calls and the ability to generate text and images from prompts.</p><p>But so far we haven’t seen a killer app that wasn’t already available from cloud-based AI services. Now Microsoft is starting to roll out a public preview of a feature that it hopes could be that must-have app. After multiple <a href="https://liliputing.com/microsoft-makes-recall-more-secure-ahead-of-rollout-promises-users-can-customize-or-uninstall-it/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">delays</a>, <strong>Recall</strong> is a finally rolling out to (some) Windows 11 PCs.</p>Recall first-run experience<p>Recall is basically a feature that’s supposed to give your PC a sort of “photographic memory,” making it easier to find things you’ve created, searched for, or interacted with over the past few months and pick up where you left off.</p><p>It does that by snapping screenshots of almost everything you do on your computer, using AI and optical character recognition to identify the contents of those screenshots, and save everything to a database that lets you either scroll through a timeline of your history or conduct natural language searches for things like “show me that pink sweater I was looking at last week.”</p><p>There’s also a <strong>Click to Do </strong>feature that leverages Recall snapshots to give you a new way to interact with just about anything on your screen.</p>Click to Do<p>When enabled, it allows you to click on any screen to bring up a context-dependent menu that lets you do things like:</p><ul><li><strong>Copy text or images</strong> to your clipboard, even if text is embedded in an image or the image is part of a document.</li><li><strong>Open text with</strong> an application of your choice.</li><li><strong>Save image</strong> <strong>as </strong>a file in a selected directory.</li><li><strong>Search the web </strong>for selected text.</li><li><strong>Visual search with Bing</strong> for items related to a picture on your screen.</li><li><strong>Open website</strong> corresponding to a URL on your screen.</li><li><strong>Send email</strong> to any address on your screen.</li><li><strong>Share</strong> images with other users.</li><li><strong>Blur background, erase objects, or remove background </strong>from images using Microsoft’s Photos and Paint apps.</li></ul><p>When Microsoft <a href="https://liliputing.com/microsoft-unveils-copilot-pc-platform-for-ai-enhanced-windows-pcs-starting-with-models-powered-by-qualcomm-snapdragon-x-chips/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first announced Recall</a> earlier this year, security researchers quickly started picking it apart and <a href="https://doublepulsar.com/recall-stealing-everything-youve-ever-typed-or-viewed-on-your-own-windows-pc-is-now-possible-da3e12e9465e" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">declared it to be a security and privacy nightmare.</a> While data has always been stored and processed locally on your PC, the initial implementation stored text and images without any encryption, which made it possible for anyone with access to your computer to peruse your history. It was also enabled by default, which means users had to manually adjust their settings if they wanted to opt out.</p><p>So Microsoft delayed the launch of Recall while it addressed those concerns. Among other changes:</p><ul><li>Recall is an opt-in feature rather than opt-out.</li><li>Users who want nothing to do with it can uninstall Recall from a PC.</li><li>Data is now encrypted.</li><li>Recall won’t work unless BitLocker and Secure Boot are enabled.</li><li>You’ll need to provide Windows Hello authentication (with a fingerprint, facial scan, or PIN) every time you want to access your data.</li><li>Recall will attempt to identify when sensitive information like passwords and credit card details are on the screen, and it will not save snapshots of that information.</li><li>You can also exclude specific apps and websites from Recall and Windows Insiders send anonymous recommendations to Microsoft for apps and websites that you thin should be excluded by default.</li></ul><p>It’s unclear when the first stable version of Recall will roll out to the general public, but Microsoft is now making <a href="https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2024/11/22/previewing-recall-with-click-to-do-on-copilot-pcs-with-windows-insiders-in-the-dev-channel/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">an initial preview of Recall available</a>. At the moment you’ll need a<span> Windows Copilot+ PC with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus or Snapdragon X Elite processor that’s enrolled in the Windows Insider Preview program running a Dev Channel build of Windows 11 preview version 26120.2415 or later. And Recall is currently only supported on systems running English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish, and Chinese (simplified). </span></p><p>Eventually Microsoft will roll out support for computers with AMD Strix Point and Intel Lunar Lake processors as well.</p>Recall timeline<p>Given the negative publicity Recall received when it was first unveiled, I’m not sure how many people are going to be clamoring for this feature at launch. But if it lives up to its promise, it could theoretically give people new ways to interact with their computers… particularly folks that aren’t particularly rigorous about creating and maintaining a file management or website bookmarking system.</p> <a href="https://liliputing.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/recall-notificaiton.png" class="" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"></a> Recall notification <a href="https://liliputing.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/recall-settings.png" class="" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"></a> Recall settings <a href="https://liliputing.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/recall_01.png" class="" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"></a> Recall setup <a href="https://liliputing.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/recall-timeline.png" class="" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"></a> Recall timeline <a href="https://liliputing.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/click-to-do.png" class="" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"></a> Click to Do <p></p><p><a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://liliputing.com/tag/ai/" target="_blank">#ai</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://liliputing.com/tag/ai-pc/" target="_blank">#aiPc</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://liliputing.com/tag/copilot-plus-pc/" target="_blank">#copilotPlusPc</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://liliputing.com/tag/microsoft/" target="_blank">#microsoft</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://liliputing.com/tag/npu/" target="_blank">#npu</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://liliputing.com/tag/recall/" target="_blank">#recall</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://liliputing.com/tag/windows/" target="_blank">#windows</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://liliputing.com/tag/windows-11/" target="_blank">#windows11</a></p>