Microsoft confirms that Windows 11 Recall AI is not optional — a glitch made it appear so in the Windows 11 24H2 KB5041865 update

Early this morning, Microsoft confirmed in a statement to The Verge that last week’s Windows 11 24H2 update, KB5041865, had not added the ability to uninstall Recall in the “Turn Windows features on or off” dialog and that its addition to that menu was a bug that will soon be fixed. It should be noted that this bugged option to uninstall Recall was also added before Recall itself, so it had no actual functionality besides (seemingly) being a way to opt out ahead of time. Once shipped, Recall will also be something Windows users can disable but not entirely remove.

For those still holding out hope that Recall may be utterly removable once it’s added, Microsoft’s comments may discourage. However, past regulations have forced it to compromise on this question before it could uninstall Microsoft Edge in European Economic Area (EEA) countries. And, of course, the backlash to Recall and its security concerns contributed to Recall’s rollout being delayed in the first place, which may also encourage Microsoft to allow its complete removal once released.

Microsoft’s comments indicate that Recall will roll out to Copilot+ enabled PCs starting next month for Windows Insiders, as planned. However, if it can’t be genuinely uninstalled instead of just disabled, one could see how Copilot+ devices could become blacklisted in specific corporate or government environments.

In any case, Microsoft’s willingness to directly comment to The Verge on this matter so quickly should correspond to the bug fix update being here reasonably soon, mainly since the bug is just showing an option with no functionality.

Once added, it’s likely that the new version of Copilot will also have the Copilot Screenray feature that was added shortly before the original preview was disabled. While Copilot would take and save periodic screenshots of your desktop, this feature goes the extra mile by giving real-time screen analysis of whatever is on your desktop, for example, translating an email in real time. The privacy concerns of both Recall and Screenray Copilot features combined are severe, so hopefully, Microsoft will make it easy for end users to disable or remove these functions securely.