Applies ToWindows 11

Search across time to find the content you need. Then, re-engage with it. With Recall, you have an explorable timeline of your PC’s past. Just describe how you remember it and Recall will retrieve the moment you saw it. Any photo, link, or message can be a fresh point to continue from. Snapshots of your screen will be saved only if you opt into the feature. If you opt in to the feature, then as you use your PC, a snapshot of your screen will be saved. Snapshots are taken periodically while content on the screen is different from the previous snapshot. Your snapshots are then locally stored and locally analyzed on your PC. Recall’s analysis allows you to search for content, including both images and text, using natural language. Trying to remember the name of the Korean restaurant your friend Alice mentioned? Just ask Recall and it retrieves both text and visual matches for your search, automatically sorted by how closely the results match your search. Recall can even take you back to the exact location of the item you saw.

Screenshot of Recall displaying search results for the query: Korean restaurant that Alice.

Notes: 

  • Recall is coming soon through a post-launch Windows update.  See aka.ms/copilotpluspcs .

  • Recall is optimized for select languages (English, Chinese (simplified), French, German, Japanese, and Spanish. Content-based and storage limitations apply. For more information, see https://aka.ms/nextgenaipcs .

System requirements for Recall

Your PC needs the following minimum system requirements for Recall:

  • A Copilot+ PC

  • 16 GB RAM

  • 8 logical processors

  • 256 GB storage capacity

    • To enable Recall, you’ll need at least 50 GB of storage space free

    • Saving screenshots automatically pauses once the device has less than 25 GB of storage space

Start saving snapshots

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ By default, snapshots for Recall aren’t enabled, you need to turn on the option. There are a few ways to do this:

  1. The first time you turn on your Copilot+ PC, you’ll be guided through setting up your PC. During this initial setup, you’ll be asked if you want to start saving snapshots of your screen for Recall . If you select the Yes, save option, then you’re ready to go with Recall.

  2. You can go to Windows Settings > Privacy & Security > Recall & Snapshots , to control when snapshots are saved, with the Save snapshots option, move the toggle switch to On .

  3. The first time you open Recall, you’ll be asked if you want to allow snapshots to be saved. If you’ve already allowed snapshots to be saved when you setup your Copilot+ PC or from Settings , then you won't be asked again when you first open Recall.

If you have multiple people that sign in on the PC with different accounts, each person needs to make the decision on if they would like to allow snapshots or not.

How to use Recall

To open Recall, use the keyboard shortcut Windows logo key +J , or select the following Recall icon on your taskbar:

Icon for Recall on the taskbar

Every time you launch Recall, you’ll be asked to confirm that it’s you. Your saved snapshots and any associated information are encrypted so that only you can access them. Recall takes advantage of just in time decryption protected by Windows Hello Enhanced Sign-in Security (ESS) . Proving your identity and that you’re allowed to access the snapshots before they decrypt and display is why Recall requires you to enroll into Windows Hello. Your search index database for Recall is also encrypted.

Screenshot of Windows Hello asking the user to authenticate to access Recall.

Your timeline in Recall is broken up into segments, which are the blocks of time that snapshots of your screen are taken while you were using your PC. You can hover over your timeline to review your activity in a preview window. Selecting the location on the timeline or selecting the preview window loads the snapshot where you can interact with the content.

Screenshot of Recall's timeline with the mouse hovering over a segment.

Search with Recall

Maybe you wanted to make that pizza recipe you saw earlier today but you don’t remember where you saw it. Typing goat cheese pizza into the search box would easily find the recipe again. You could also search for pizza or cheese if you didn’t remember the specific type of pizza or cheese. Less specific searches are likely to bring up more matches though. If you prefer to search using your voice, you can select the microphone then speak your search query.

Screenshot of the search field for Recall showing the microphone icon and a search for goat cheese pizza.

By default, results are shown from all apps where Recall found matches. You can narrow down your results by filtering the matches to a specific app by selecting an app from the list.

Screenshot of the list of apps that contain the results in Recall

When the results are displayed, they will be listed under the headings of text matches and visual matches . Matches that are closer to your search are shown first. You’ll also notice that some items are listed as one of the following types of matches:

  • Close match : Close matches typically include at least one of the search terms or images that are representative of a term in your query.

  • Related match : Matches that share a commonality with the search terms would be considered related. For instance, if you searched for goat cheese pizza , you might also get related matches that include lasagna or cannelloni since they are Italian dishes too.

Interacting with content

Once you’ve found the item you want to see again, select the tile. Recall opens the snapshot and enables Click to Do, which runs on top of the saved snapshot. Click to Do analyzes what’s in the snapshot and allows you to interact with individual pieces of info in the snapshot. You’ll notice that when Click to Do is active, your cursor is blue and white. The cursor also changes shape depending on the type of info beneath it. What you can do with the info changes based on what kind of content Click to Do detects. If you select a picture in the snapshot, you can copy, edit with your default picture editing app such as​​​​​​​ Photos, or open it in another app like the Snipping Tool, or Paint. When you highlight text with Click to Do, you can open it in a text editor or copy it. For example, you might want to copy the text of a recipe’s ingredients list to convert it to metric.

​​​​​​​ Screenshot showing Recall with screenray active and text selected.

Click to Do will temporarily save content when you use an option that sends content to an app, such as Notepad or Paint. The temporary file is deleted once the app is finished with the content. Click to Do creates a temporary file one of the following locations:

  • C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Local\Temp

  • C:\Users\{username\AppData\Local\Packages\MicrosoftWindows.Client.AIX_cw5n1h2txyewy\TempState​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Below your selected snapshot, you have more snapshot options. In many cases, you can have Recall take you back to exact location of the item, such as reopening the webpage, PowerPoint presentation, or app that was running at the time the snapshot was taken. You can also hide Click to Do, copy the snapshot, delete the snapshot, or select for more snapshot options.

Screenshot of the options for the snapshot at the bottom of the Recall window.

Pause or resume snapshots

To pause recall, select the Recall icon in the system tray then Pause until tomorrow .  Snapshots will be paused until they automatically resume at 12:00 AM. When snapshots are paused, the Recall system tray icon has a slash through it so you can easily tell if snapshots are enabled. To manually resume snapshots, select the Recall icon in the system tray and then select Resume snapshots .  You can also access the Recall & snapshots settings page from the bottom of this window.

Screenshot of Recall option, found in the taskbar, to pause snapshots until tomorrow

What if I don’t want Recall to save information from certain websites or apps?

You are in control with Recall. You can select which apps and websites you want to exclude, such as banking apps and websites.  You’ll need to use a supported browser for filtering websites and automatically filtering private browsing activity. Supported browsers, and their capabilities include:

  • Microsoft Edge: blocks websites and filters private browsing activity

  • Firefox: blocks websites and filters private browsing activity

  • Opera: blocks websites and filters private browsing activity

  • Google Chrome: blocks websites and filters private browsing activity

  • Chromium based browsers: For Chromium-based browsers not listed above, filters private browsing activity only, doesn’t block specific websites

Understanding Sensitive Information Filtering in Recall:

When using Recall, the Sensitive Information Filtering setting is enabled by default to help ensure your data's confidentiality. This feature operates directly on your device, utilizing the NPU and the Microsoft Classification Engine (MCE) - the same technology leveraged by Microsoft Purview for detecting and labeling sensitive information.

When this setting is enabled, snapshots won't be saved when potentially sensitive information is detected. Most importantly, your sensitive information remains on your device at all times, regardless of whether the Sensitive Information Filtering setting is enabled or disabled.

For examples of the data that is being filtered, see Sensitive information type entity definitions .

To exclude a website:

  1. Select then Settings to open the Recall & snapshots settings page.

    1. You can also go to Windows Settings > Privacy & Security > Recall & Snapshots to manage Recall.

  2. Select Add website for the Websites to filter setting.

  3. Type the website you want to filter into the text box. Select Add to add it to the websites to filter list.

Screenshot of adding a website to the filter list in the Recall & snapshots page in Windows settings.

To exclude an app:

  1. Select then Settings to open the Recall & snapshots settings page

  2. Select Add app for the Apps to filter setting.

  3. From the app list, select the app you want to filter from Recall snapshots.

Screenshot of adding an app to the filter list in the Recall & snapshots page in Windows settings

When you select the Now option in Recall, a snapshot is taken without your private browsing windows, blocked apps, and blocked websites. These snapshots are only saved if you have saving snapshots enabled. If you choose to send the information from this snapshot to another app, like Paint, a temp file will also be created in C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Temp to share the content. The temporary file is deleted once the content is transferred over the app you selected to use.

Managing your Recall snapshots and disk space

You can configure how much disk space Recall is allowed to use to store snapshots. The amount of disk space you can allocate to Recall varies depending on how much storage your PC has. The following chart shows the storage space options for Recall:

Device storage capacity

Storage allocation options for Recall

256 GB

25 GB (default), 10 GB

512 GB

75 GB (default), 50 GB, 25 GB

1 TB, or more

150 GB (default), 100 GB, 75 GB, 50 GB, 25 GB

You can change the amount of disk space used or delete snapshots from the Recall & snapshots settings page.

To change the storage space limit:

1. Expand the Storage settings.

2. Change the Maximum storage for snapshots limit by choosing the limit from the drop-down list. When the limit is reached, the oldest snapshots are deleted first.

To delete snapshots:

  1. Expand the Delete snapshots settings.

  2. You can choose to delete all snapshots or snapshots withing a specific timeframe.

    1. To delete all snapshots, select Delete all .

    2. To delete snapshots from a specific timeframe, select a timeframe from the drop-down list, then select Delete snapshots.

​​​​​​​ To stop saving snapshots:

Move the toggle switch to Off for the Save snapshots option under Windows Settings > Privacy & Security > Recall & Snapshots .

Screenshot of the storage options in the Recall & snapshots page in Windows settings

Keyboard shortcuts for Recall

Keyboard shortcut

Action

Win + J

Opens Recall

Home

Takes you to the beginning of the timeline

End

Takes you to the end of the timeline

Tab

Initial Tab takes you into the timeline segment for now. Additional Tab moves to the next timeline segment to the right

- Right arrow also moves to the next timeline segment to the right

Shift + Tab

Moves to the left to the previous timeline segment

- Left arrow also moves to the previous timeline segment to the left

Ctrl + right arrow

Drags the time indicator in the timeline to the right

Ctrl + left arrow

Drags the time indicator in the timeline to the left

Enter

Takes you to the first snapshot in a segment and puts the focus on the snapshot

Keyboard shortcut

Action

Enter

Takes you into a snapshot so you can interact with it

Takes you into an element then navigates to individual child elements within the parent element

Tab

Moves to the next item in the top level group

Esc

Takes you back up a level when navigating

Arrow keys

Moves in the direction indicated by the selected arrow key in the current level

Ctrl + left/right arrow

Moves to the next or previous word in the group. If text within the group isn’t selected, selects the first or last word in the group.

Moves to the first or last word in a multiword selection

Ctrl + Shift + left/right arrow

Add or removes words from a multiword selection

Ctrl +A

Selects all text within a group

Space

Opens the context menu for the selected item or text. If an item or text isn’t already selected, all of the text will be selected for the context menu

Ctrl + C

Copies the selected item

Home

When navigating within a group, sends the focus to the first item in the group

End

When navigating within a group, sends focus to the last item in the group

Microsoft’s commitment to responsible AI and Privacy

Microsoft has been working to advance AI responsibly since 2017, when we first defined our AI principles and later operationalized our approach through our Responsible AI Standard. Privacy and security are core principles as we develop and deploy AI systems. We work to help our customers use our AI products responsibly, sharing our learnings, and building trust-based partnerships. For more about our responsible AI efforts, the  principles that guide us, and the tools and capabilities we've created to assure that we develop AI technology responsibly, see​​​​​​​ Responsible AI .

Recall uses optical character recognition (OCR), local to the PC, to analyze snapshots and facilitate search. For more information about OCR, see Transparency note and use cases for OCR . For more information about privacy and security, see Privacy and security for Recall & Click to Do .

We want to hear from you!

If there's something you like, and especially if there's something you don't like, about Recall you can submit feedback to Microsoft by selecting then the Feedback icon in Recall to submit feedback on any issues that you run into.

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