Microsoft total recalls Recall totally to Copilot+ PCs

After temporarily shelving its controversial Windows Recall feature amid a wave of backlash, Microsoft is back at it - now quietly slipping the screenshotting app into the Windows 11 Release Preview channel for Copilot+ PCs, signaling its near-readiness for general availability.

In May last year, at its Build developer conference, Microsoft introduced Recall, a feature that silently takes screenshots of your desktop every few seconds and stashes them in a local database so you can later scrub through the footage to recall – get it? – what you were doing on your PC at a particular point in time.

The functionality was set to grow to allow you to rummage through that database, using AI, to pull up specific actions based on search terms, as well as take snapshots of application activity, instant messages and other communications, websites viewed, keystrokes, and any other data available, so that it could all be, well, recalled ...