Microsoft delays release of Recall feature

The drama around Microsoft’s Recall feature continues. In May, the company announced the new feature that can take you back through a visual timeline of your activity on your PC, so you can quickly find that recipe you saw online earlier or that obscure setting you stumbled across deep within the Settings app.

However, the feature immediately raised huge privacy concerns, with many users unhappy that the feature was on by default. Microsoft rowed back and the revised plan was that the feature would be available as an opt-in feature in the Copilot Plus PCs that are due to launch on June 18.

However, the plan has changed once more. The Recall feature will now no longer be available on these new AI-focused computers on release, and unless you’re part of the Windows Insider Program, you may have quite a wait until it becomes available.

When will Recall be available?

It won’t be on your Copilot Plus PC straight away

Microsoft has realized that a feature this controversial needs thorough testing. Instead of being available as a preview on all Copilot Plus PCs, Recall will initially be released as part of Windows Insider, the software testing program that allows users to test out pre-release versions of the operating system.

However, even if you’re part of the Windows Insider Program, you won’t be able to start trying out Recall from day one. The Recall preview won’t be available when the new Copilot Plus PCs launch, so even if you’re part of the program, you’ll still have to wait. Microsoft has said that it will publish a blog post with details of how to get the preview, once it becomes available.

It’s likely that Microsoft will take its time to examine the feedback from Windows Insiders about the controversial feature before releasing it to the general population, so we may not see Recall being released to all Copilot Plus PC users for quite some time. If you don’t own a Copilot Plus PC, you won’t get access to the feature at all. That’s because the neural processing unit (NPU) that’s only available in these models is required to handle the on-device processing for Recall.

Why is Recall so controversial?

There are some major privacy concerns

Microsoft

The Recall feature is controversial because in order to work, it takes a snapshot of your screen every few seconds. This creates a visual record of everything you’re doing on your computer. If you’re writing a private email, for example, the contents of that message could be captured in a snapshot.

If you’re using Microsoft Edge, Recall won’t take snapshots when you’re using private browsing. However, while this will work with some other browsers, including Firefox, Opera, and Chrome, not all browsers are supported, meaning that Recall could take snapshots of your private browsing in some circumstances.

It’s also the case that Recall doesn’t perform any content moderation. This potentially means that Recall could take snapshots of your passwords or financial details if they’re visible on the screen, as well as any NSFW content you may be looking at.