Microsoft Recall takes a screenshot of your screen every few seconds, runs it through an on-device AI model, and stores a searchable timeline of everything you've ever looked at — emails, bank statements, Slack DMs, NDA-protected client files, the works. It ships enabled by default on new Copilot+ PCs. If you have one, or you're about to buy one, here's how to check whether it's running, turn it off, and remove what it's already captured.

This isn't a theoretical privacy concern. Recall's snapshot database lives in a folder on your local disk, and security researchers have repeatedly shown that anything with local access to your machine — malware, a shared account, a stolen laptop with weak disk encryption — can potentially read it. For tech workers handling client data, source code, or anything under an NDA, that's a real exposure, not a hypothetical one.

What Microsoft Recall Actually Does

Recall is a feature built into Copilot+ PCs (Windows machines with a qualifying neural processing unit, mostly Snapdragon X, Intel Lunar Lake, and AMD Ryzen AI chips released from 2024 onward). It works like this:

Every few seconds, Recall takes a full-screen screenshot.
An on-device AI model (not cloud-based) runs OCR and image analysis on the screenshot to extract text and context.
That data gets indexed into a local SQLite database, encrypted at rest, tied to your Windows Hello credentials — the same kind of account-level protection worth double-checking on your AI accounts more broadly.
You can later search your "timeline" in plain language — "find the spreadsheet I had open last Tuesday" — and Recall surfaces the matching screenshot.

Microsoft's pitch is a kind of perfect memory for your PC. The privacy problem is that it's a perfect memory of everything, including things you never intended to keep a record of: a password briefly visible in a terminal, a medical portal, a private message, a contract under NDA.

Microsoft says the data stays local and isn't used for AI training or sent to the cloud. That's true as designed. The risk isn't Microsoft's servers — it's that you now have a forensic-grade screenshot archive of your entire digital life sitting on your own disk, and disk-level access is a much lower bar to clear than a cloud breach.

Why This Matters More If You Work With Client or Company Data

If you're a developer, consultant, freelancer, or anyone under an NDA, Recall creates a new category of exposure that didn't exist before:

E-discovery and legal risk. A Recall database is effectively an automatic, granular log of every screen you've ever viewed. If your device is ever subject to legal discovery, that's a much larger surface than your file system alone.
Shared or managed devices. On a work laptop with IT-managed accounts or shared logins, Recall's snapshots can capture far more than the task at hand — including things colleagues or clients didn't consent to being recorded.
Theft and physical access. Windows Hello protects the Recall database behind biometric or PIN auth, but no local encryption scheme is bulletproof against a sufficiently motivated attacker with physical access to an unlocked or weakly secured machine.
Screen-shared secrets. If you've ever had a password manager autofill, an API key in a terminal, or a tax document open — even briefly — Recall likely captured it as a readable screenshot. If you work with API keys regularly, see our guide on credential hygiene for developers for how a single leaked screenshot can compound into a bigger exposure.
NDA and client-data exposure. Consultants and freelancers already have specific storage obligations under most client contracts, and a Recall archive can quietly violate them. See what your client NDA actually requires for encrypted storage if you handle any contract work.

None of this requires Microsoft to be malicious. It just requires Recall to exist as a standing target.

Step 1: Check If Recall Is Already Running

Recall only ships on Copilot+ PCs, but Microsoft has expanded eligible hardware over time, and it's been turned on by default in some regional rollouts. Don't assume — verify.

Check via Settings:

Open Settings → Privacy & security → Recall & snapshots
If you see this menu at all, your device supports Recall
Check whether "Save snapshots" is toggled on

Check via PowerShell (more reliable):

```powershell

Get-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName "Recall"

```

If the State returns Enabled, Recall is active on your machine right now.

Check if it's already collected data:

```powershell

dir "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\CoreAIPlatform.00\UKP" -Recurse

```

If this path contains files, Recall has been capturing and storing snapshots.

Step 2: Disable Recall Completely

Turning off the toggle in Settings stops new snapshots but doesn't always fully remove the feature or guarantee background processes stay off after updates. For a clean disable, do both the Settings change and the optional-feature removal.

Disable via Settings (do this first):

Settings → Privacy & security → Recall & snapshots
Toggle Save snapshots to off
Restart your machine

Fully remove the Recall feature (recommended for sensitive work):

```powershell

Run PowerShell as Administrator

Disable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName "Recall" -NoRestart

```

Restart after this completes. This removes the feature rather than just pausing it, which matters because Windows updates have occasionally re-enabled toggled-off features.

For managed/enterprise devices, Recall can also be blocked via Group Policy:

```

Computer Configuration → Administrative Templates → Windows Components → Windows AI →

"Turn off saving snapshots for use with Recall"

```

Set this to Enabled to block it at the policy level — useful if you manage devices for a team and want Recall off by default across the fleet.

Step 3: Delete What's Already Been Captured

Disabling Recall going forward doesn't delete the snapshots it already took. Clear the existing archive separately.

Via Settings:

Settings → Privacy & security → Recall & snapshots
Under "Snapshots," select Delete all snapshots
Confirm — this requires Windows Hello re-authentication

Manual verification the data is gone:

```powershell

dir "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\CoreAIPlatform.00\UKP" -Recurse

```

This directory should now be empty or absent. If files remain, the deletion didn't complete and you should retry through Settings rather than deleting the folder manually — manual deletion can leave index fragments behind that a forensic tool could still partially reconstruct.

One more thing worth knowing: standard deletion removes the files from the visible file system, but it doesn't securely wipe the underlying disk sectors. If you've had Recall running on a machine with genuinely sensitive client or legal material, treat the drive as having held that data permanently, not just temporarily — full disk encryption going forward is the real mitigation, not after-the-fact deletion.

What to Do Instead, If You Want AI Search Without the Risk

The appeal of Recall — fast, AI-powered search across your own activity — is legitimate. You don't have to give that up. You just need it to not live as an unencrypted forensic log on a single device.

Use encrypted, zero-knowledge storage for anything you'd be uncomfortable in a Recall-style archive. Tresorit is end-to-end encrypted cloud storage where even Tresorit can't read your files. If client documents, contracts, or financial records live in Tresorit instead of sitting open on your desktop, a screen-capture tool like Recall has nothing sensitive to grab in the first place — the files are decrypted only momentarily, in memory, when you're actively working in them.

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Route AI research queries through a provider that doesn't build a permanent profile of what you look at. If part of what you liked about Recall was "find that thing I researched last week," Perplexity Pro gives you fast, cited answers without keeping a local screenshot trail, and its private search mode doesn't tie your query history to your identity the way a local image index does. For a developer or consultant doing competitive research or due diligence, that's a meaningfully different risk profile than a tool that's silently photographing your screen.

Locking Down the Rest of Your Windows AI Surface

Recall isn't the only Copilot+ feature worth auditing. A few related settings to check while you're in there:

Windows Copilot data access. Copilot (the assistant, separate from Recall) can be granted access to files and apps. Review what it's connected to under Settings → Apps → Installed apps → Copilot → Advanced options. If you use Microsoft 365 Copilot at work on top of this, see our breakdown of what 365 Copilot can see at work for the separate set of permissions that one carries.

Click to Do and other on-screen AI features. Newer Copilot+ features analyze on-screen content for quick actions. They're generally lower-risk than Recall since they don't persist a database, but they still process screen content through an AI model — worth knowing what's enabled. The same "reads what's on your screen" pattern shows up in browser-level AI copilots like Chrome's Gemini and Edge's Copilot, which are worth auditing at the same time.

Network-level protection for any cloud AI you do use. Local AI features like Recall stay on-device, but the moment you use cloud Copilot, ChatGPT, or any hosted AI tool from the same machine, that traffic leaves your network. Routing it through Proton VPN keeps your ISP and network observers from correlating your AI usage patterns, and Proton's no-logs policy has been independently audited rather than just claimed.

A Quick Checklist

Run through this on any Copilot+ PC you own or are issued for work:

[ ] Check Settings → Privacy & security → Recall & snapshots for current status
[ ] Disable "Save snapshots" if on
[ ] Run Disable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName "Recall" for a full removal
[ ] Delete existing snapshots through Settings (not manual file deletion)
[ ] Verify the CoreAIPlatform.00\UKP directory is empty
[ ] If managed by IT, confirm Group Policy blocks Recall fleet-wide
[ ] Move sensitive documents to encrypted storage so screen-capture tools have less to capture
[ ] Route cloud AI traffic through a VPN if you use hosted AI tools alongside local ones

The Bottom Line

Microsoft Recall isn't sending your screen to the cloud, and Microsoft's privacy claims about on-device processing appear to hold up technically. The problem is the shape of the risk it creates: a single, comprehensive, searchable archive of everything you've ever seen on your screen, sitting on the same disk as the rest of your data, protected by the same security model as everything else on that machine.

For most consumers, that's a manageable trade-off. For anyone handling client data, source code, financial records, or anything under an NDA, it's a feature that should be off by default until you've deliberately decided you want it — not the other way around.

The fix takes about ten minutes: check the status, disable the feature, delete the archive, verify it's gone. Do it before your next Windows update, since feature re-enablement after major updates has been a recurring complaint since Recall's rollout began.

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Last updated: 2026-06-30