Microsoft's Recall feature has been nothing short of a PR nightmare. Announced as part of its Copilot+ suite of AI features, it was set to arrive on new hardware that's going to ship on June 18. And now, it's being delayed indefinitely. In an update to a blog post, the company says that in the coming weeks, it's going to begin testing Recall with Windows Insiders who opt to try it, before rolling it out broadly.

The road to recalling Recall

It's been a PR nightmare since day one

While Copilot+ is a pretty wide array of features that depend on dedicated NPU hardware on new laptops, Recall was undoubtedly the hero feature. The idea is pretty simple. It's going to be your photographic memory. Let's say you're trying to find a picture, and all you can remember is that your friend was wearing a red shirt and you were in the park. You can search for that using natural language and find the memory. This goes for everything you do on your PC. Looking for those green sneakers you were shopping around for but can't remember the name of? Recall's got you.

Sounds pretty great, right? Now, what if I told you that Windows does this by taking screenshots of everything you do every few seconds? That probably sets off alarm bells, even though everything is stored and processed locally and you have complete control over turning Recall off, setting apps it can't record, and pausing it whenever you want.

For many, it absolutely set off those alarm bells, and there was a significant backlash. When people figured out how to activate it on existing hardware, they found that the database that stores information about the screenshots isn't even encrypted, and it's all a security nightmare.

On Friday, Microsoft announced major changes to how the feature would work. It's going to be an opt-in experience instead of opt-out, you'll need Windows Hello to use Recall to make sure it's you, and everything will be encrypted using just-in-time decryption.

Rushing Recall's release

It wasn't even ready when it was announced

If you're following the timeline here, you'll notice that the big changes were announced on June 7. While didn't announce any delays at the time, it seemed a bit off to assume that Microsoft was going to put this together in 11 days.

Moreover, this feature wasn't even ready to ship when it was announced on May 20. Microsoft was always going to come down to the wire with Recall.

Now, it's going to do what it probably should have done in the first place, which is to ship it to Windows Insiders first. Indeed, had this been the plan from the beginning, testers would have spotted the issues and they would likely have been fixed before they ever rolled out to the public.

Of course, that means that Recall is delayed indefinitely. It's no longer going to ship on June 18 to anyone, and Windows Insiders will get it "in the coming weeks". As for when the general public will get it, that all depends on how testing goes.