By the time you've set eyes on this article, Copilot+ computers will be in the wild. The first wave of Copilot+ devices launch on June 18th, and you can snap one up to get yourself ready for Microsoft's new wave of AI tools. But ever since the feature was announced a month ago, its controversial Recall feature has been at the forefront of people's minds when they think of Copilot+. In the past few weeks, we've seen a storm of activity surrounding Recall, with a big tug-of-war between Microsoft and the general public to strike an agreeable middle ground.

Now that Copilot+ compatible hardware is entering people's homes, it's time to cut through all the confusion and settle the score; what is going on with Recall, and what should you expect if you purchase a PC that can run it?

Recall has been totally removed from Copilot+ (for now)

The controversial feature will be MIA during the release

Let's get the most important development out of the way; when you get a Copilot+ PC and the update arrives for it, you won't find Recall. And we don't mean that it'll be disabled by default, which Microsoft originally planned for Recall. We mean that it physically won't be a part of Copilot+ on release.

Why is it absent? Microsoft never made an official statement on the topic, so we don't know for sure. However, there's a very good chance that the company went back on Recall's release after privacy concerns. If you were out of the loop, people's opinions on Recall turned sour when it was revealed that the feature took periodic screenshots of your entire desktop so that Copilot could remember how you used your PC. Since Recall's announcement, Microsoft has been busy quelling people's privacy fears, saying that hackers could never gain access to your data due to BitLocker's encryption.

This was all well and good until someone found that Recall saved plain text activity logs of everything the user did. This was a huge problem; when the plain text logs came to light, it was clear that, yes, hackers and malware developers could potentially steal away your logs and see everything you browsed, typed, and messaged. And that was too big a privacy risk to justify its release.

Honestly, the best call of action for Microsoft was to recall Recall. Granted, the company probably should have made Recall more secure in the first place before rolling it out, but deciding to go back on its plans was the second-best thing it could have done. It'll give the company a lot more time to finalize the security and hopefully make something more secure.

Recall will highly likely return in the future

People who dislike the feature shouldn't breathe easily

Does this mean that Recall is forever gone? Not quite. While we haven't heard from Microsoft about a proposed re-release date, nor have we heard it discuss what it wants to achieve before Recall can be made public, there is proof that the company still believes Recall can work.

How do we know that? After Microsoft announced that it would remove the feature from Copilot+ on release, it added new features to the preview version of Recall. Granted, this feature was simply a manual way to trigger a Recall screenshot, but it was still a feature. Plus, with Recall being a key feature announced during Microsoft's Build event, there's a very good chance that the company won't simply put the feature to bed.

Microsoft will let you disable Recall, but is that enough for people to trust Copilot+?

It all comes down to how much you trust Microsoft

If Recall does come back, there's a good chance that Microsoft will continue with its original plan and make it an optional tool. This means you'll have a switch you can toggle on and off depending on how you feel about Recall. There will also likely be administrative tools that will allow companies to prevent Recall from working across all of their employee's terminals.

As such, if you want a Copilot+ device but don't want Recall, you need to ask yourself one thing; do you trust Microsoft to respect your wishes? If you do, then your answer is simple: grab a new PC, disable Recall when it releases, and continue forth. However, if you're worried that Microsoft may continue to take screenshots of your desktop once the option is off, or you believe Microsoft will make it a mandatory feature in a future update, then perhaps take a miss on getting a Copilot+ PC. In fact, if Microsoft finds a lot of success with Copilot+ and continues to support it for years to come, you may be better off using a free alternative to Windows instead of toughing it out.

Microsoft has one more chance to sell people on Recall

Microsoft made the right choice to withdraw Recall for now, but now it's walking on a thin tightrope. If the Redmond giant messes up with the re-release, it may seriously harm Copilot+ PC sales. As such, while Recall isn't a part of Copilot+ right now, you can bet that it'll make a return as soon as Microsoft can justify its addition again.