Recall is an upcoming AI feature of Windows 11. It takes captures of the screen every five seconds and saves them on the local system. Users may then interact with AI to look up information or process data that has been captured.
Most current Windows 11 PCs won’t get Recall functionality, as a Copilot+ PC is required. These PCs have specific requirements that include a neural processing unit and 16 GB of RAM.
The first iteration of Recall will only be available for specific Snapdragon ARM processors on top of that. With time, Recall will become available for AMD and Intel PCs as well.
Recall Criticism
Windows 11’s Recall feature is not without criticism. Here are the main points:
It records a user’s entire activity on the Windows PC, with a few exceptions. This makes it the holy grail for law enforcement, spammers, malicious actors, advertisers and marketers.
Recall snapshots require lots of storage. The default is 25 GB on a 256 GB hard drive. While you can drop that to 10 GB, it is still a lot of space. On 1 TB+ drives, the default is 150 GB of storage.
Disabling Recall in Windows 11
There are three options to disable Recall on PCs that support it.
Via the Settings app.
Via the Group Policy Editor.
Via the Registry (not yet available)
Settings app
Open the Start menu and select Settings.
Go to Privacy & security > Recall and snapshots.
Toggle Save snapshots to off.
This is all to it. Recall is disabled from that moment on for that user account.
Turn off Recall in the Group Policy Editor
Note: The Group Policy Editor is only available in Windows 11 Pro, Enterprise, and Education editions. Home systems may disable Recall in the Registry, which is explained in the next section.
Open the Start menu.
Type gpedit.msc and press the Enter-key to load the Group Policy Editor.
Use the hierarchy on the left to go to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows AI.
Double-click on Turn off Saving Snapshots for Windows.
Change the statues from Not Configured to Disabled.
Restart the PC.
Disable Recall in the Registry
Information not yet available, will update once it becomes available.
A lot has been written about the upcoming Recall feature of Windows 11 version 24H2. Reserved exclusively for Copilot+ PCs, it will be unavailable to the majority of users who upgrade their Windows 11 PCs to the new version.
Recall, in a nutshell, takes frequent captures of the entire screen and stores them encrypted on the local system. Windows 11 users may then invoke the Recall feature to interact with the saved content.
From searching for specific information over getting summaries of watched videos or telecalls to finding that specific asparagus recipe that you looked at some time ago in Edge.
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. As you use your PC, Recall takes snapshots of your screen. Snapshots are taken every five seconds while content on the screen is different from the previous snapshot.
How Recall works
You use natural language to find something and Recall returns the information separated into text and visual matches.
Recall is shown as an icon on the Windows 11 taskbar and it may also be started using the keyboard shortcut Windows-J.
Recall displays a timeline on start that you may use to check out a specific day. Recall loads and displays the snapshots of that particular day then, allowing you to interact with the content.
Search is the heart of recall. You use natural language to find or interact with the saved content.
Type what you are looking for and Recall returns any matching snapshot. The AI feature displays hits from all apps by default, but you can filter results by a specific app to narrow down the results.
The feature distinguishes between close and related matches:
Close matches — includes at least one of the search terms or images that represent the search term.
Related matches — displays related items, e.g., cannelloni results when you searched for goat cheese pizza.
Selecting a screenshot launches the Screenray feature. Microsoft says that Screenray anayzes the snapshot and enables interactions with elements of it.
The company writes:
What you can do with each element changes based on what kind of content screenray detects. If you select a picture in the snapshot, you can copy, edit with your default .jpeg app such as Photos, or send it to another app like the Snipping Tool or Paint. When you highlight text with screenray, you can open it in a text editor or copy it.
Is Recall a privacy nightmare?
Recall records most activity on a Windows PC when it is active. It is up to the user to enable or disable Recall.
Microsoft has added options to disallow the capturing of specific apps or websites. Some of these are only available in Edge.
Recall does not capture private browsing sessions in Chromium-based browsers. In Edge, the feature may furthermore block captures of specific websites.
In other words, if you use a different browser than Edge, website filtering won’t work. If you use Firefox or another non-Chromium-based browser, everything will get recorded.
Recall runs locally only according to Microsoft. Captures are stored locally and the OCR feature runs local as well only.
The main privacy concerns
Recall runs locally only. The main concern that some users have is that someone else may gain access to the recorded data.
There are several scenarios where this may happen:
Malware infections may gain access to the data. This gives threat actors access to a user’s entire activity on the PC. It may include information about financial services they use, online accounts, password managers or security software, and confidential information in Word or Excel.
Law enforcement, including border agents, may want access to the information as it highlights (most of) the activity of a user on the Windows 11 device. Users may be coerced into giving state representatives access to their Windows PCs.
It is your choice
You may or may not use Recall. Most Windows 11 users cannot even use it, as their PCs do not meet the minimum system requirements.
If your PC supports it, you may want to ask yourself a simple question: do I really need it? Is it improving may workflows or helping me in another way?
It is a novelty feature, but how often will you make use of it once that novelty factor wanes off?
If you ask me, I won’t make use of it. All my PCs are not Copilot+ PCs and even if they were, I would turn it off as I do not need it. I know where to look when need to find something.
For businesses, it may play a bigger role. Making everything searchable, including video calls and presentations, is certainly useful in some scenarios.
What about you? Will you use the Recall feature when it comes out?
Microsoft configured non-managed Windows 10 systems to restart automatically after the installation of updates. This can be a huge problem for users. If you run certain processes or have important apps up and running, Windows 10 may restart regardless of that.
This happens after a certain inactivity period. Sometimes, this may result in users losing access to work or being thrown out of games or other apps. While some may reload, like Office apps, others may not reload to the state they were in prior to the initialization of the restart.
The following sections offer step-by-step instructions to stop Windows 10 from restarting the system automatically after the installation of updates.
Stop automatic restarts using the Group Policy Editor
Note: the Group Policy Editor is only available for Pro, Enterprise, and Education editions. In other words, it is not available for Home editions. Please skip this section and check the Registry section below for instructions to enable the same policy on Home devices.
Open the Start Menu.
Type gpedit.msc and select Edit Group Policy from the results. This opens the Group Policy Editor.
Follow the folder structure on the left and go to: Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Update.
Double-click on No auto-restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates installations.
Set the policy to Enabled.
Select OK.
Double-click on Configure Automatic Updates under the same Windows Update folder.
Set the policy to Enabled.
Set the policy to Auto download and schedule the install.
Click ok.
Tip: you can also set the second policy to Notify for download and auto install to prevent any automatic downloads of updates or installations of updates.
Stop automatic reboots using the Registry
Open the Start menu.
Type regedit.msc and select Registry Editor.
Confirm the UAC prompt, if it is displayed.
Go to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU.
If a key does not exist, right-click on the previous key and select New > Key. Name it accordingly.
Right-click on AU and select New > Dword (32-bit) Value. Repeat the steps six times:
Name the first AUOptions. Double-click and set its value to 4.
Name the second NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers. Double-click on it and sets its value to 1.
Name the third NoAutoUpdate. Double-click on it and set its value to 0.
Name the fourth ScheduledInstallDay. Double-click on it and set its value to 0.
Name the fifth ScheduledInstallEveryWeek. Double-click on it and set its value to 1.
Name the sixth ScheduledInstallTime. Double-click on it and set its value to 3.
You have several options when it comes to downloading Windows ISO images. From downloading them from Microsoft using the Media Creation Tool to using tools such as Rufus to download them.
One of the easiest options to get the latest Insider or Stable ISO images is to use UUP Dump.
It supports:
All Windows releases: Windows 10, Windows 11, and Windows Server.
All Windows channels: Public Release, Release Preview, Beta, Dev and Canary.
Quick Options to get the latest build of a specific channel.
Recently added builds to see the latest releases.
Select the desired language and click next.
Select the desired edition, e.g., Windows Home and Pro, and click next.
Make sure download method is set to download and convert to ISO.
Check conversion options:
Include updates.
Run component cleanup.
Integrate .NET Framework 3.5.
Use solid (ESD) compression.
Select create download package.
Pick a local folder and select save to download the ZIP archive to the local system.
Right-click on the download ZIP file and load the properties.
Select the unblock option and click ok to proceed.
Extract the ZIP archive.
Modify CustomAppsList.txt to select the Microsoft Store apps that you want installed when using the ISO image. Add # in front to block installation and remove # to include the installation.
Run uup_download_windows.cmd to start the process.
Note that Windows may throw a SmartScreen warning.
The process may take quite some time. Wait until you get the notification that you may press 0 to exit.
Microsoft has added support for extracting archive formats and creating ZIP archives in its Windows operating system. This is a useful feature, as it allows users to manage several popular archive formats without installation of third-party software.
If you encounter archives occasionally, say once a month, then it is usually easier to use the built-in functionality than third-party tools.
Now, Microsoft is working on bringing support to create 7-Zip and Tar archives to Windows 11. This works identical to creating zip archives.
Just right-click on and select the “compress to” option to see a list of all available archive formats. Pick the one you want and Windows will compress the selection of files to the format.
The three supported formats increase the usefulness of the feature. While Windows continues to lack support for creating other popular formats, such as Rar or Gz, adding native support for more formats is still welcome.
Third-party archive software is superior
While it is great that Windows is getting support for extracting and creating archives, most users may want to use third-party software still.
The main reason is performance. Extracting archives with Windows’ built-in extraction feature is much slower. Similarly, creating archives using Windows’ built-in compress to functionality is also much slower.
This is true for any of the supported formats. It can takes minutes longer to extract an archive using the Windows functionality. Might not be such a big problem if the functionality is needed rarely, but if you happen to extract or compress regularly, you should use third-party software such as 7-Zip or WinRAR to do so.
Closing Words
All in all, it is still a good feature addition to Windows. It improves handling of archives right out of the box. Still, most users should install third-party archive software to manage archives on Windows.
What about you? Do you use archive software? If so which and why this particular piece?
Over the last couple of days, a story about Microsoft PC Manager suggesting to reset the default search engine of Microsoft Edge to Bing made the rounds.
While I’m usually critical when Microsoft is introducing new ads on Windows or trying to persuade users to use its products, I think this new attempt is blown out of proportion.
Before you start asking how much Microsoft paid me for that opinion, hear me out.
Microsoft PC Manager
Microsoft PC Manager is available in select regions only. Created by a Microsoft team in China, it is added to Chinese Windows systems from this month onward.
The tool has a couple of options. Notable are PC boost, which tries to reduce memory usage and the space that temporary files occupy. There is also an option to manage some startup items, processes, or run a deep clean operation to free up more space.
It is a basic tool, but some users may find it useful. One of the features of PC Manager is that it can show tips to the user. These tips are also basic. One of them checks the default search engine of Microsoft Edge. If it is not Bing Search, PC Manager will suggest resetting it as a tip.
While it can be seen as yet another attempt from Microsoft to get users to use Bing Search, it can be helpful as well. The case here is if a malicious software has changed the search engine in Edge.
Yes, it does not happen as often anymore as five or so years ago, but there is still a chance of that happening.
Edge users who have changed the default search engine can also ignore the suggestion easily. While I agree that putting this as a repair tip stretches the definition of repair in many cases, it is still not as problematic as resetting search providers automatically after the installation of updates or showing annoying notifications if you happen to use the “wrong” browser.
In worst case, users select the option to have the search engine in Edge reset to Bing. It takes a couple of clicks to change the search engine again.
Closing Words
Better tools exist to handle what PC Manager offers. It is a Microsoft app, on the other hand, which may appeal to users who were burned by other booster apps or optimization apps.
All in all, it is often better not to use apps like PC Manager. Most functionality is manageable elsewhere better. For startup items, use Autoruns. For storage, try BleachBit. For processes, try the Windows Task Manager or Process Explorer.
What is your take on this? Have you used Edge or Bing Search recently?
The Windows Snipping Tool is a good screenshot tool that covers a lot of use cases already. While third-party screenshot tools, including PicPick or ShareX, are usually better, the Snipping Tool is sufficient for many Windows users.
Microsoft is testing a new feature integration in the Snipping Tool currently. It integrates Bing into the tool. More precisely, it adds an option to run a visual search for content displayed by the Snipping Tool.
To use it, you select Menu > Visual Search with Bing. This opens the Bing search results for the displayed content.
You can give it a try right away. Just visit Bing Images and select the “search using an image” option on the webpage.
Here, you may upload an image or select one of the sample images displayed by Visual Search.
The feature identifies objects and people. Multiple identified objects are selectable and the search results reflect the selection. It is also possible to highlight a specific part of an image to get related content and information about it.
This is the latest in a series of new features that Microsoft baked into the Snipping Tool. Recent additions include support for text recognition among other features.
Visual Search using Copilot
Windows Copilot may display information about the active image on the Windows system. You can upload any image to Copilot or allow Copilot to access Clipboard images.
You’d have to copy the image to the clipboard first, which many screenshot tools support.
The information that Copilot provides is limited, however, and it is not visual, but text-based.
Closing Words
Microsoft continues to integrate Bing, Copilot and AI into Windows and applications. The upcoming feature update for Windows 11 heralds the beginning of AI PCs, at least according to Microsoft.
Snipping Tool users who do not need the feature can safely ignore it. It can be useful to some Snipping Tools users, but a feature like it may work better on mobile devices.
What about you? Which screenshot tool do you prefer?
Back in April 2024, Microsoft changed the description of a Windows Start menu preference in an Insider build. It changed it from “show recommendations for tips, shortcuts, new apps, and more” to “Show recommendations for tips, shortcuts, new apps, ads, and more”.
The addition of three letters — ads — seemed to confirm Microsoft’s path of turning Windows into an advertising vessel.
Current Windows versions may show ads — Microsoft likes to call them promotions, recommendations, and tips — in various places already.
Copilot — may return ads as part of its answers.
File Explorer — may show notifications to use OneDrive for backup.
Lock screen — may show ads when Windows Spotlight is enabled to show wallpapers.
Notifications — may display suggestions and tips. These may also include promotions.
Search — Windows 11 Search supports web results by default, which may be displayed as suggestions.
Settings Home — displays Microsoft 365 and/or Game Pass subscription information and options.
Start Menu — may show ads for apps under recommended.
Start Menu — account profile icon may show a warning, if not signed-in with a Microsoft account, to sync data to OneDrive.
Widgets — shows curated content from the Web, by default from MSN and other Microsoft services.
The release of build 26212 for Windows 11 changes the description again. This time, it reads: “Show recommendations for tips, app promotions, and more”.
The word ads is gone, and so is the word shortcuts. The term new apps has been replaced with app promotions. The latter indicates that Microsoft continues to hold on to the idea of promoting Microsoft Store apps in the Start Menu.
Ads on the other hand, appear off the table for now. Since this is a development build, there is still the chance that Microsoft is making changes to the description and functionality in the future.
Microsoft never revealed how ads would look like in the Start menu. Maybe it had plans to integrate them into the new Windows 11 Start menu sidebar feature that it started testing recently.
Closing Words
The reversal is a win for the Windows community, but it is likely not the last battle that needs to be fought in regards to ads in Windows.
Microsoft’s Windows operating system may use Windows Updates to install driver updates. One of the main purposes of the feature is to ensure that recent drivers are installed for all components.
While that sounds good on paper, it has led to issues in the past: from releasing older drivers to the installation of extra tools, including those with Telemetry.
Windows administrators who want full control of driver installations may disable automatic driver updates.
Downsides
Drivers won’t be updated automatically anymore on the system as a consequence. This means that it is up to the administrator to find, download, and install new device drivers.
Drivers may introduce improvements, such as better power management, new features, bug fixes, or improved performance. They may also introduce undesirable changes, such as telemetry.
Disabling automatic driver updates in Windows using the Group Policy Editor
Note: the Group Policy Editor is not available in the Home edition of Windows. Home edition administrators need to modify the Registry instead to make the change directly there. See the next chapter on how to do that.
Open the Start Menu.
Type gpedit.msc and press the Enter-key to launch the Group Policy Editor.
Windows 10: Go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Tools > Windows Components > Windows Updates.
Windows 11: Go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Tools > Windows Components > Windows Update > Manage updates offered from Windows Updates.
Double-click on Do not include drivers with Windows Updates.
Change the status of the policy to Enabled.
Restart the system.
Windows won’t download and install drivers anymore via Windows Update after the restart.
Block automatic Windows driver updates via the Registry
The method below adds the same restriction to the Windows system. It works on any edition, including Home.
Open the Start menu.
Type regedit.exe and press the Enter-key to launch the Registry Editor.
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate
Note: if a key does not exist, e.g. WindowsUpdate, right-click on the previous value, and select New > Key. Name it accordingly and proceed.
Right-click on WindowsUpdate and select New > Dword (32-bit) Value.
Name it ExcludeWUDriversInQualityUpdate.
Double-click on the new value and set it to 1.
Close the Registry Editor.
Restart the system.
Closing Words
It is up to the individual user to keep automatic driver updates enabled via Windows Update or disable them. Usually, it is better to download and install drivers manually, but that requires regular checks or the use of third-party driver checkers.
Inexperienced users may want to keep the default setting, even though that may mean getting unwanted extras during driver updates.
What about you? Do you install drivers manually or let Windows do the lifting?
Updates introduced some of these features. You can now drag and drop tabs around to create new File Explorer instances or merge instances.
Soon, you will also be able to duplicate an open tab.
Windows 11 File Explorer: duplicate tab
Microsoft announced the option some time ago. It is now available in Beta insider builds of Windows 11.
To use it, all you have to do is right-click on any open tab and select the new duplicate tab option. This spawns a new tab in the same File Explorer instance that displays the same path as the source tab.
We’re rolling out the ability to duplicate a tab by right-clicking on a tab in File Explorer.
When is this landing in stable? Microsoft does not say. A likely candidate is the Windows 22 2024 Update, which is expected in September / October of 2024.
Workaround to duplicate tabs
Here is a quick workaround to duplicate tabs right now. It has flaws and it is not as quick, but it should work in many cases.
The one requirement is that the source tab should have at least one folder listing.
Middle-click on the folder in the source tab. This opens the selected folder in a new tab in File Expxlorer.
Use the path to navigate back to the source folder by clicking on its name.
Closing Words
Duplicating tabs is just a small feature, but some Windows 11 users will certainly find it handy. I have to admit that I do not use tabs at all. I prefer to use two File Explorer instances whenever I need access to multiple folders, e.g., for copying files.
What about you? Do you use File Explorer tabs or use a third-party file manager with tabs support?
