Windows Recall Is Getting Its First Major Update
Recall has been mired in controversy since it was announced, as early critics were quick to raise concerns that the feature could be an enormous security and privacy vulnerability. Since then, Microsoft has gradually been rolling out changes and improvements to Recall designed to alleviate some of those concerns and make Recall more user-friendly.
Microsoft's latest addition—which is currently in both the Beta and Dev channels of the Microsoft Insider Program—is a homepage, which Microsoft has dubbed a "personalized productivity portal."
As user-facing additions go, a homepage is a pretty big improvement. As it stands currently, Recall's primary interface is a basic timeline that you can scrub through, or you can use the search bar. The search bar is a "semantic search," which means it tries to intelligently match the intention of your search, not just the actual keywords you type.
The new homepage prominently features the three apps you used the most in a 24-hour period, plus the websites you've spent the most time on. It'll also display your snapshots, which should make it easier to find what you're looking for, rather than manually scrubbing through the timeline.
The homepage also features a new navigation bar on the left that integrates some buttons you'd probably expect: a homepage button, a timeline button (which just takes you to the current Recall timeline as it exists now), a Settings button, and a feedback button. They're not particularly exciting features, but they are important for usability.
Having the Settings front and center is a particularly welcome addition, since it will be a bit of a reminder that you can prevent Recall from capturing snapshots of certain apps or sites if you don't want them showing up in your history.
While the changes being tested are certainly an improvement, I'm not completely sold on the utility unless it brings something really special to the table.
If you're working on your PC day in and day out, you already know which applications you use a lot, and PowerToys (a collection of software distributed by Microsoft) already includes WorkSpaces, which lets you open a preset list of programs, specific locations on your PC, or websites with the press of a few buttons. Browsers also already list the sites you've visited recently and the sites you visit most frequently.
In many ways, Recall's present form feels a lot like a solution—and a reason to use cool new AI tricks—in search of a problem.
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