Last week, Microsoft finally unleashed Windows 11 version 24H2 onto the world, but that wasn't all that was new for Windows fans. The company also announced new features coming to Copilot+ PCs in the next few months, including the long-awaited return of Recall.

This was a very exciting announcement, especially because I've been a big believer in Recall ever since we first heard about it, even before it was officially announced. I know there have been some privacy controversies surrounding the feature, but I believe there's potential for a lot more good than bad here.

Copilot+ needs a selling point

AI has to add actual value to the experience

We've reviewed many a Copilot+ PC here at XDA so far, with many Qualcomm-powered PCs coming across our desks. We loved those laptops, but if you look into it, you'll see that it's never really for what Copilot+ has to offer right now. All these AI-powered features that run on the NPU are basically worthless. Windows Studio Effects are a neat party trick you use once, but after that, there's no reason to care. Generating images in Paint is just sort of irrelevant, and changing a photo's style in the Photos app is even more so.

Recall was always what made Copilot+ sound cool, and when Microsoft pulled that feature for the official release, it all fell apart. With its return, Microsoft has a chance to save the Copilot+ branding and give it some proper meaning. Microsoft knows its current features are worthless, too, since it's adding a lot more capabilities that sound much cooler, like generative fill in Paint and Click to Do across the operating system.

These new features, combined with Recall, really make Copilot+ that much more exciting. Hopefully Microsoft can keep building more and more features around the NPU to make it really worth it.

I still believe in the concept

The Windows Timeline was always a good idea

You may not remember this, but Windows 10 introduced a big new feature called Timeline, which kept track of your activities, even across devices, and let you jump back to what you were doing before by simply browsing a timeline of those activities. Sound familiar? Yes, this is pretty much what Microsoft is doing again with Recall.

That basic concept of the Windows Timeline was always absolutely enticing to me. How many times have you had to stop working on a project for a while and wanted to come back to it later? That simple idea makes total sense. The problem was the Windows Timeline in Windows 10 relied on apps integrating with it. That meant the only things that really worked were apps like Microsoft Edge and the Office apps. It rendered it basically useless.

Recall takes this idea and makes it so much better thanks to AI. It scans everything that's on your screen so it can remember anything you were working on, regardless of the app you were using. It also uses it to recognize the text on your screen, so you can search for things based on terms you remember from that screen, instead of having to scroll based on how long it's been. It probably still won't be a perfect experience, but having that groundwork is extremely important, and Microsoft has already provided developers on designing apps specifically for Recall. So users can enjoy some benefits of Recall even without any special apps, and developers can just choose to make that experience better. That's the ideal approach for something like this, and I'm excited to see it evolve.

Microsoft is fixing the privacy problems

And you can even uninstall it

The reason why Recall was pulled from its initial launch target was because of major privacy concerns that were spotted quickly after the announcement. Particularly, the idea that Recall saved screenshots of everything on your PC and stored them in a plain format without any extra encryption to keep that kind of information safe. This was a major problem and reports spread very quickly about it, so Microsoft did the right thing and pulled the feature.

Microsoft has committed to using encryption to keep your data secure until you've logged in, in addition to requiring Windows Hello to verify your identity on the PC. Plus, you'll have to re-authenticate occasionally to ensure your PC hasn't been hijacked, plus all the processes that are used to verify your identity run in a secure isolated environment to avoid tampering. This should alleviate any big concerns you might have with the privacy implications of using Recall.

Also, if you don't want to use it at all, the feature is now going to be opt-in during the initial setup, and you can even uninstall Recall altogether if you don't want any risk of using it accidentally. Microsoft has thankfully listened to feedback and Recall will be arriving in a much better state than it was originally going to.

It's exciting to see Windows get new features

It's easy to feel like PCs have peaked

At this point, and for many years now, it's felt like computers have sort of peaked in what they can do. Sure, they get faster every year, but is that really a reason to be excited? Windows itself has also become more boring, so outside of occasional visual changes, it can often feel like there isn't much that can be done to keep things fun for those who like to follow Windows developments.

The introduction of the NPU and the features associated with Copilot+ PCs are a big factor against that idea. While AI has been somewhat useless so far, it's definitely nice to see that effort can still be put into making things interesting, and AI in general still has a lot of potential untapped, so we could be seeing more and more interesting additions for years to come. Even looking specifically at Windows 11 2024 Update, most of the new features are related to Copilot+.

Recall is just the beginning, as we've seen with all the other features announced last week, and in the coming years, things will be more and more impressive as NPUs get more powerful and more efficient. As someone who enjoys seeing everything that's added to Windows, it's nice to have big new features to look forward to. And hopefully some of them actually become mainstays of Windows in the future.

Recall isn't too far off

With all of that being said, I'm pretty excited to see Recall make its way to Windows Insiders later this month. Since I have an Intel Lunar Lake laptop on hand, I hope to be among the first to try it out and see how useful it can really be. Hopefully it lives up to my expectations.