Retrace your steps with Recall

Search with Recall

Maybe you wanted to make that pizza recipe you saw earlier today but you don’t remember where you saw it. Typing goat cheese pizza into the search box would easily find the recipe again. You could also search for pizza or cheese if you didn’t remember the specific type of pizza or cheese. Less specific searches are likely to bring up more matches though. If you prefer to search using your voice, you can select the microphone then speak your search query.

By default, results are shown from all apps where Recall found matches. You can narrow down your results by filtering the matches to a specific app by selecting an app from the list.

When the results are displayed, they will be listed under the headings of text matches and visual matches . Matches that are closer to your search are shown first. You’ll also notice that some items are listed as one of the following types of matches:

• Close match : Close matches typically include at least one of the search terms or images that are representative of a term in your query.

• Related match : Matches that share a commonality with the search terms would be considered related. For instance, if you searched for goat cheese pizza , you might also get related matches that include lasagna or cannelloni since they are Italian dishes too.

Interacting with content

Once you’ve found the item you want to see again, select the tile. Recall opens the snapshot and enables Click to Do, which runs on top of the saved snapshot. Click to Do analyzes what’s in the snapshot and allows you to interact with individual pieces of info in the snapshot. You’ll notice that when Click to Do is active, your cursor is blue and white. The cursor also changes shape depending on the type of info beneath it. What you can do with the info changes based on what kind of content Click to Do detects. If you select a picture in the snapshot, you can copy, edit with your default picture editing app such as​​​​​​​ Photos, or open it in another app like the Snipping Tool, or Paint. When you highlight text with Click to Do, you can open it in a text editor or copy it. For example, you might want to copy the text of a recipe’s ingredients list to convert it to metric.

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Click to Do will temporarily save content when you use an option that sends content to an app, such as Notepad or Paint. The temporary file is deleted once the app is finished with the content. Click to Do creates a temporary file one of the following locations:

• C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Local\Temp

• C:\Users\{username\AppData\Local\Packages\MicrosoftWindows.Client.AIX_cw5n1h2txyewy\TempState​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Below your selected snapshot, you have more snapshot options. In many cases, you can have Recall take you back to exact location of the item, such as reopening the webpage, PowerPoint presentation, or app that was running at the time the snapshot was taken. You can also hide Click to Do, copy the snapshot, delete the snapshot, or select … for more snapshot options.

Pause or resume snapshots

To pause recall, select the Recall icon in the system tray then Pause until tomorrow .  Snapshots will be paused until they automatically resume at 12:00 AM. When snapshots are paused, the Recall system tray icon has a slash through it so you can easily tell if snapshots are enabled. To manually resume snapshots, select the Recall icon in the system tray and then select Resume snapshots .  You can also access the Recall & snapshots settings page from the bottom of this window.

What if I don’t want Recall to save information from certain websites or apps?

You are in control with Recall. You can select which apps and websites you want to exclude, such as banking apps and websites.  You’ll need to use a supported browser for filtering websites and automatically filtering private browsing activity. Supported browsers, and their capabilities include:

• Microsoft Edge: blocks websites and filters private browsing activity

• Firefox: blocks websites and filters private browsing activity

• Opera: blocks websites and filters private browsing activity

• Google Chrome: blocks websites and filters private browsing activity

• Chromium based browsers: For Chromium-based browsers not listed above, filters private browsing activity only, doesn’t block specific websites

Understanding Sensitive Information Filtering in Recall:

When using Recall, the Sensitive Information Filtering setting is enabled by default to help ensure your data's confidentiality. This feature operates directly on your device, utilizing the NPU and the Microsoft Classification Engine (MCE) - the same technology leveraged by Microsoft Purview for detecting and labeling sensitive information.

When this setting is enabled, snapshots won't be saved when potentially sensitive information is detected. Most importantly, your sensitive information remains on your device at all times, regardless of whether the Sensitive Information Filtering setting is enabled or disabled.

For examples of the data that is being filtered, see Sensitive information type entity definitions .

Managing your Recall snapshots and disk space

You can configure how much disk space Recall is allowed to use to store snapshots. The amount of disk space you can allocate to Recall varies depending on how much storage your PC has. The following chart shows the storage space options for Recall:

You can change the amount of disk space used or delete snapshots from the Recall & snapshots settings page.

To change the storage space limit:

1. Expand the Storage settings.

2. Change the Maximum storage for snapshots limit by choosing the limit from the drop-down list. When the limit is reached, the oldest snapshots are deleted first.

To delete snapshots:

1. Expand the Delete snapshots settings.

2. You can choose to delete all snapshots or snapshots withing a specific timeframe.

   1. To delete all snapshots, select Delete all .

   2. To delete snapshots from a specific timeframe, select a timeframe from the drop-down list, then select Delete snapshots.

​​​​​​​ To stop saving snapshots:

Move the toggle switch to Off for the Save snapshots option under Windows Settings > Privacy & Security > Recall & Snapshots .