It’s fair to say that Windows Recall has been one of Microsoft’s more controversial ideas in recent times. The AI-powered system routinely captures screenshots of your monitor’s output and stores them in an encrypted local database, allowing you to then search for apps, websites, or even document text and images. With its latest Windows 11 Insider build, Microsoft has now added an export function to let you share this data with third-party applications, though not every Copilot+ PC user will see this option.
This is because the Recall Export feature will only be rolled out to users living in the European Economic Area (EEA), which includes all 27 members of the European Union (EU), plus three other countries, namely Iceland, Norway, and Liechtenstein. Everyone else? You’re out of luck for the time being.
As to whether this is good or bad news, I’d say it leans more towards the former, as Microsoft is allowing for more uses for Recall while also giving users more data privacy control. That said, there are some important caveats about the export function. The most notable of which is the fact that Recall’s database is encrypted, and so in order to share it, a key is generated when Recall is enabled.
You get one key, and one only, so if you lose the piece of paper you’ve scribbled it down on or (and please don’t do this) the text file that you’ve saved it in, you’ll need to restart Recall to get a fresh key. This process will wipe the database clean, though, so you can never get another key for your current database.
The export function isn’t the only thing changed in Recall. Microsoft has also altered how long the database is stored for on your Copilot+ PC. Previously, it was kept for an indefinite amount of time by default, but now it’s 90 days.
As to why Microsoft added the export function in the first place, and more specifically, only for EEA folks, The Register asked this particular question and received the expected reply: “The changes are a result of Microsoft’s ongoing commitment to complying with applicable laws and regulations.”
Whether other countries push for the same change is anyone’s guess, but until they do, just remember that if you’re not in the EEA, the data that Recall is collecting might be yours, but there’s not a lot you can do with it outside of your PC.
