After months of silence, Microsoft finally revealed that Copilot's most controversial feature, Recall, would be making a return starting in October. Not everyone was happy with its return, especially given how Microsoft needs to do a lot more to convince users to use Recall. Fortunately, it seems that the company has added the ability to uninstall Recall from Windows, but the feature may not roll out to everyone.

Microsoft's Recall feature is becoming uninstallable...hopefully

As spotted by the German website Deskmodder, Microsoft has added the ability to uninstall Recall in an optional Windows 11 update. As it states (translated from German):

Until now, you could only block the function or deactivate it in the settings. But with the optional update KB5041865, Recall can now also be uninstalled from the system. Recall has been added as a Windows feature.

This was added in the old Control Panel -> Programs and Features -> Turn Windows features on or off. Interestingly, this entry is currently missing in Windows 11 Canary.

That's all well and good - so where's the catch? Well, it's important to note that Deskmodder is getting its information from a German build of Windows 11. European versions of Windows work a little differently from the rest of the world, given how the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA) demands that companies operating within the continent abide by specific laws. This includes allowing certain features to be uninstallable - like Recall, for instance.

However, as we've learned the hard way, tech companies don't always feel obliged to roll out these DMA changes to the rest of the world. As such, there's a chance that uninstalling Recall may be an EU-exclusive feature. Fortunately, there are ways to enable EEA features on Windows 10 and 11 wherever you are, so hopefully someone finds a way to do the same for Recall.