Microsoft’s Recall tool will capture your Windows desktop every 5 seconds

A screenshot every 5 seconds

Reminiscent of Apple’s Rewind and the late Windows 10 abandoned Timeline feature, Recall is currently in the testing phase to improve and gather feedback from early users. It uses artificial intelligence to offer a complete chronological timeline of the actions carried out on a PC. Sites visited, applications and files launched, conversations… Recall remembers everything and takes a screenshot every 5 seconds to easily find an action. A search engine, compatible with natural language, is also there to find something. Once the action is found, Recall offers contextual actions and will eventually be able to open the source document/site/email.

In addition to compatibility with Copilot+ (which requires a minimum of 16 GB of RAM and a chip equipped with a 40 TOPS NPU), Recall will require at least 256 GB of storage space with 50 GB free to operate. Microsoft says that on a 256 GB drive, the default allocation will be 25 GB, allowing approximately three months of activity to be stored. The oldest ones are automatically deleted in favor of the most recent ones.

Only local operation

In an FAQ, Microsoft immediately wants to reassure people worried about their privacy. Recall will only work locally, on the machine where it is installed, saving data there encrypted and separately for each profile. No synchronization with the cloud, therefore. It will also be possible, via a small configuration, to exclude specific applications and websites from Recall, delete snapshots, or even pause the tool directly from the taskbar.

Recall also does not take snapshots of certain content, such as private browsing sessions on Microsoft Edge, or those with DRM. Sensitive elements displayed in plain text such as passwords or bank account numbers will not, however, be hidden in the snapshots.