Microsoft Recall
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/copilot-plus-pcs
Windows-native screen-recording memory. Continuously indexes activity across apps, documents, browsing; timeline UI for revisiting work. Distinct from Copilot Memory.
At a glance
- Type
- OS-level screen-recall timeline
- Tier
- T1
- Created
- 2024 (announced May 2024; GA rollout April 2025)
- Latest release
- not applicable — not OSS
- License
- not applicable — not OSS
- GitHub
- not applicable — no GitHub repo
- Pricing
- Closed
- Funding
- not applicable — Microsoft Corporation ($3T+ public company)
Taxonomy
- storage
- file
- retrieval
- similarity
- persistence
- long-term
- update
- append-only
- unit
- episode
- governance
- user-controllable
- conflict
- overwrite
When to use
Optimised for: personal-knowledge-management UX + AI-augmented note-taking
Anti-fit: not for enterprise / programmatic use; not for compliance-regulated workloads
Pros & cons
Pros
Most aggressive ambient capture of any major OS — every screen seen is searchable, then queryable.
Cons
Drew significant privacy backlash on launch (May 2024); only Copilot+ PC hardware supported.
Claims & capabilities
Originally announced May 2024, retracted within weeks following security/privacy backlash. Re-released April 2025 to Windows Insiders Release Preview Channel with stronger encryption, biometric Windows Hello auth, opt-in default, automated content filtering of credit-card / banking / password fields. Brave, Signal, AdGuard added explicit Recall-blocking. Available on Copilot+ PCs only
Technical surface
- API surface
- not applicable — consumer feature, no public API
- Backend storage
- local SQLite (encrypted)
- Deployment
- On-prem
- Embedding model
- locked (Microsoft on-device)
- Multi-tenancy
- not applicable — single user
- MCP
- searched not found
- A2A
- not supported
- OpenTelemetry
- no — consumer product
Compare Microsoft Recall with…
Similar systems
Other personal ai / pkm / lifelogging memory in the catalog, ranked by inbound references.
- Amplenote T2
Tags + bidirectional links + task/calendar integration. "Task Score" priority matrix. AmpleAI plugin supports OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek, Ollama.
- Apple Notes + Apple Intelligence T1
Folder + tag hierarchy; iCloud sync. Writing Tools (proofread / rewrite / summarise) across all note content; audio transcription + AI summary; smart search; reminders from to-dos.
- Capacities T2
Object-graph (people, books, projects as typed objects); daily notes; bidirectional links. AI chat grounded in current note; AI property auto-fill; in-editor writing assistant; pattern-finding across objects.
- Craft AI T1
Hierarchical block-based documents + nested pages (no native graph). In-document AI assistant: summarise, rewrite, translate, Q&A over docs, proofread.
- Heptabase T2
Visual whiteboard canvas + nested cards + bidirectional links + journal. AI chat with cited sources inside whiteboards; supports OpenAI / Gemini / Anthropic backends.
- Heyday T2
AI memory and research assistant. Resurfaces pages, highlights, and notes while browsing; saves context, recalls sources, generates summaries.