Hadlee Simons / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Microsoft has announced that it won’t broadly release its Recall feature when Copilot Plus PCs launch next week.
- Instead, the company will release Recall to testers first in the “coming weeks” ahead of a wider launch.
- The news comes after a slew of privacy and security issues were uncovered.
Microsoft made headlines earlier this month thanks to its Recall feature for upcoming Copilot Plus PCs. The feature, which constantly takes screenshots of your Windows system so you can view your past activities, has plenty of privacy and security concerns.
Microsoft already revealed several changes to Recall last week in light of these issues, but it looks like this isn’t enough. Now, the Windows maker has announced that Windows Recall won’t be available broadly when Copilot Plus PCs launch on June 18.
The company made the announcement on its Windows Blog:
Recall will now shift from a preview experience broadly available for Copilot Plus PCs on June 18, 2024, to a preview available first in the Windows Insider Program (WIP) in the coming weeks. Following receiving feedback on Recall from our Windows Insider Community, as we typically do, we plan to make Recall (preview) available for all Copilot Plus PCs coming soon.
It’s interesting to note that Microsoft isn’t actually offering a firm date for Recall’s availability in the Insider program. This isn’t a bad thing as it suggests the company plans to take its time extensively testing and tweaking the feature instead of rushing to meet a release date — you know, what it should’ve done in the first place.
I’m also personally glad to see a delayed release as my Recall hands-on revealed that the feature was very unpolished in the first place. So a delayed release would’ve been beneficial even if there weren’t any major privacy or security issues to begin with.
Either way, this saga could’ve probably been mitigated if the company hadn’t fired thousands of testers a decade ago in favor of making customers its testers via the Insider program.