Microsoft will begin sending a revised version of its controversial Recall feature to Windows Insider PCs beginning in October, according to an update published today to the company’s original blog post about the Recall controversy.
The company didn’t elaborate further on specific changes it’s making to Recall beyond what it already announced in June.
Microsoft had planned to launch Recall as one of the flagship features of its Copilot+ PC launch in July, along with the new Qualcomm Snapdragon-powered Surface devices, but its rollout was bumped back and then paused entirely so that Recall could be reworked and then sent out to Windows Insiders for testing like most other Windows features are.
Among the changes Microsoft has said it will make: The database will be encrypted at rest and will require authentication (and periodic reauthentication) with Windows Hello before users will be allowed to access it.
“Security continues to be our top priority and when Recall is available for Windows Insiders in October we will publish a blog with more details,” reads today’s update to Microsoft Windows and Devices Corporate Vice President Pavan Davuluri’s blog post.
When the preview is released, Windows Insiders who want to test the Recall preview will need to do it on a PC that meets Microsoft’s Copilot+ system requirements.
The x86 builds of Windows for Intel and AMD processors don’t currently support any Copilot+ features regardless of whether the PC meets those requirements, but that should change later this year.
It’s possible that users will figure out how to get Recall and other Copilot+ features running on unsupported PCs at some point, too.
A revised version of Microsoft’s contentious Recall feature will be sent to Windows Insider PCs starting in October, the company announced in a blog post update that was posted today regarding the controversy surrounding the Recall feature. The business only provided the June announcements regarding the specific adjustments it is making to Recall; it did not go into further detail.
To put it briefly, Recall is a Windows service that operates in the background on compatible PCs, continuously capturing screenshots of user activity, recognizing text from those screenshots through optical character recognition (OCR), and saving both the screenshots and the OCR text to a massively searchable database on your pc\.. Microsoft claims that the purpose of Recall is to assist users in retracing their steps and uncovering information about previously accessed files and tasks.
The issue was that, because none of the data was encrypted at rest or substantially protected, attackers with physical or remote access to your computer, as well as other users sharing the same computer, could easily access, view, and export those screenshots and the OCR database.
Along with the new Surface devices powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon, Microsoft had planned to launch Recall as one of the standout features of its Copilot+ PC launch in July. However, the rollout of Recall was delayed and then stopped completely so that it could be reworked and then, like most Windows features, sent out to Windows Insiders for testing.
Microsoft has announced a number of changes, including the encryption of the database while it is not in use and the requirement for Windows Hello authentication and periodic reauthentication before users can access it. The feature will also be turned off by default; initially, it was intended to turn it on by default and require users to go into Settings in order to turn it off.
The latest update to Microsoft Windows and Devices Corporate Vice President Pavan Davuluri’s blog post states, “Security continues to be our top priority and we will publish a blog with more details when Recall is available for Windows Insiders in October.”.
Windows Insiders who wish to test the Recall preview after it launches must use a computer that satisfies Microsoft’s Copilot+ system requirements. These consist of a processor with 256GB of storage, 16GB of RAM, and a neural processing unit (NPU) that can perform at least 40 trillion operations per second (TOPS). Regardless of whether the PC satisfies those requirements, the x86 builds of Windows for Intel and AMD processors do not currently support any Copilot+ features. However, that is expected to change later in the year.
That being said, just as it is possible to run Windows 11 on PCs that don’t meet the system requirements, security researchers and reporters who discovered the vulnerabilities in the first version of Recall were only able to do so because it was possible to enable them on unsupported PCs. Users might eventually figure out how to run Recall and other Copilot+ features on unsupported PCs as well.
