When Microsoft first announced its Recall feature, it stirred up quite a bit of controversy. Well, okay, people still feel really uneasy about it, and for good reason; the system takes snapshots of your current screens, scans them for data, and then stores the information to recall later on. The idea is that you can then use Copilot to ask questions about your past session usage, and it can go through the logs and dig up relevant details about what you're asking.

The first iteration was pretty unsecure, so Microsoft went back to the workshop and made a new one that it states is a lot safer than the old version. One of the key features to protect people's sensitive information involves blocking any private browsing windows that are open; after all, they're private for a reason. Well, Brave has taken that tech and made it so Recall can't scan any of its windows, albeit you can turn the feature off if you really want.

Brave Browser now stops Recall from peeking at your windows by default

In a blog post on the Brave website, the company breaks down what it's planning with the Brave Browser. It took inspiration from Signal, which deployed technology to prevent Recall from scanning its windows, but it also ended up breaking screenshotting tools from working in the process.

Fortunately, Brave can do something similar by using Recall's own tools against it:

Microsoft has said that private browsing windows on browsers will not be saved as snapshots. We’ve extended that logic to apply to all Brave browser windows. We tell the operating system that every Brave tab is ‘private’, so Recall never captures it. This is yet another example of how Brave engineers are able to quickly tweak Chromium’s privacy functionality to make Brave safer for our users (inexhaustive list here). For more technical details, see the GitHub issue for this feature.

Brave is the only major Web browser that disables Microsoft Recall by default in all tabs.

While I'm unsure as to why anyone would want to turn it off, it's always important to give the end user the choice to opt out if they wish. If you want Recall to see what you have going on in your browser window, head over to the Settings menu in Brave, then go to "Privacy and security." Turn off the "Block Microsoft Recall" option and Recall can now browse the net with you.

If you want to learn more about the browser, we listed it as one of the best privacy-focused web browsers that keep trackers at bay. However, it's definitely not without its flaws, and one of our writers goes so far as to claim that Brave Browser is the most overrated browser out there, and they don't recommend using it.