One of the ways that Microsoft is pushing AI in Windows 11 is through a new feature called Recall. Available on Copilot+ PCs only, the feature essentially takes screenshots of your display every few seconds, allowing you to search through the images with AI to “recall” specific information. It sounds useful, but also dangerous: If you don’t want Windows to record virtually everything you do on your PC, you can actually turn the feature off.
Why you may want to disable Recall
Recall sounds like a cool feature on paper, but there are legitimate security concerns for all users. While the feature does save screenshots and their information on-device, that ultimately will not stop bad actors from accessing those snapshots should they somehow break into your system. The screenshots are encrypted when your computer is locked, but you decrypt them when logging in, so if someone breaks into your computer—either locally with your credentials or remotely with software—they can access and steal your Recall information.
Effectively, you’re storing a treasure trove of nearly everything you do on your PC, including uncovered passwords, financial data, sensitive company information, and private messages. While there are some limits to what Recall captures, including any apps and sites you choose to block, you leave yourself open to data theft for anything private you happen to do on your computer. You can learn more about Recall’s massive security risks here.
How to turn off Recall
If you want to take advantage of the other AI features that Microsoft offers with a Copilot+ PC, but aren’t exactly happy about the operating system recording all your activity, you can turn off Recall by heading into Settings > Privacy & security > Recall & snapshots. From here, toggle the Save snapshots option to off. This will stop Windows from saving these snapshots to your system. If you already have screenshots you want to remove, you can use the Delete snapshots feature below this option.
Credit: Microsoft
You don’t have to turn off Recall to make it a bit safer to use, however: From this same settings page, you can choose certain apps and websites for Recall to avoid going forward. However, Microsoft notes these filters will only work in supported browsers, including Microsoft Edge, Firefox, Opera, and Google Chrome. On the flip side, you can disable Recall for entire browsers, if you like.
The tech company also says that Recall won’t save data from private browsing activity when using Microsoft Edge, Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome, or other Chromium-based browsers, and content protected by digital rights management (DRM) will not be captured by Recall, either.
Microsoft says it will explain the new feature when you set up a Copilot+ PC for the first time, and will give users the option to open Recall settings following set up to manage and disable the feature. However, it’d be nice if you could disable Recall from the get-go: You shouldn’t have to dig into your settings after the fact to turn it off.