Controversial Recall feature to roll out to Windows Insiders beginning in October

The controversial Windows Recall feature appears to be ready to make a comeback. Microsoft announced in an updated blog post on Wednesday it will begin rolling the AI feature, available only on Copilot+ PCs running Windows 11, to members of the Windows Insider program in October.

Microsoft paused its rollout of Windows Recall shortly after it began testing it in the Windows Insider Canary channel. The software giant hit the pause button after multiple security concerns about the new feature were raised.

Recall, If you recall, is a new feature available only on Copilot+ PCs that periodically takes screenshots of your active windows on your PC, analyzes them on-device using a neural processing unit (NPU) and an AI model, and inputs that analysis into an SQLite database. The user can then query that database using natural language searches to retrieve relevant screenshots.

The problem was with the security (or lack thereof) built into the feature. Researchers discovered the SQLite database was accessible to other users on the PC, either locally or remotely via malware. Microsoft announced major changes to encrypt the database and require a Windows Hello login to use Recall, then pulled the feature from even the Canary channel by mid-June.

When released, Recall will remain available only on computers meeting specific hardware requirements. The computer will need an NPU capable of performing at least 40 TOPS. The current complete list of requirements, other than the minimum requirements to even run Windows 11, include:

Microsoft will release the Recall feature to the Windows Insider program to “leverage the valuable expertise” of those users before making it available to the general public. It has yet to be announced whether it will release Recall only to the Canary build channel.

Pavan Davuluri, Microsoft’s corporate vice president, Windows + Devices, noted, “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.”

We’ll have more details when Microsoft releases the blog post in October detailing how to install an Insider build, including Recall.