Especially during extensive research, it’s easy to get lost in the endless traces of snippets, screenshots, and links. Even if you don’t have to dig into details to create projects, striking a fine balance between hectic work and demanding personal life isn’t smooth sailing for everyone. Hence, remembering and recollecting every important thing you do at a particular moment becomes a hassle.
As a result, you are forced to go back in time, dig through the cluster of notifications, swipe through messages, or dive into your inbox to retrieve the missing information. This oft-repeated act of recollection puts a lot of stress on your memory, ruins your productivity, and often threatens to derail your ongoing work.
To sort out this very mess, Microsoft has introduced “Recall” so that you can go back and forth in time and excavate something that is out of your sight without breaking any sweat. Whether that happens to be a pivotal message from your boss in a crowded group chat, an email from your client, or a web link, this AI-driven timeline feature will let you spot and recover the specific thing with the simplest of cues. On this very note, here are the 20 best tips and tricks to use Windows 11 Recall on your Copilot+PC like a pro.
Best Tips & Tricks to Use Windows 11 24H2 Recall on Copilot+PC
Before moving ahead, let’s briefly understand how Recall works for a clear understanding!
1. What exactly is Recall and why should you care for it?
Powered by AI, “Recall” is designed to keep a tab on your entire activity and automatically save everything you do on your computer. Therefore, you can search the snapshots of anything that happened at a particular time and bring them back as and when the need warrants. Aside from saving your precious time, this “Photographic memory” can also play a vital role in boosting your productivity.
To ensure you are able to track and record every moment, snapshots are captured every five seconds. Since your content is locally stored and analyzed, you shouldn’t worry about the privacy of your sensitive information. Of course, there are some downsides and privacy concerns which we will discuss in another post. So, keep them at bay for now…
For those unfamiliar, “Recall” is the (unofficial) next iteration of the “Timeline” feature that failed to make an impact in Windows 10. Bolstered by AI, it is way more powerful than its predecessor and has the tools to become one of your favorite Windows features.
2. Make Sure Your Computer Supports Recall
Before moving ahead, make sure to tick off all the system requirements for “Recall”.
- A Copilot+ PC
- 16 GB RAM
- CPU: Snapdragon X or equivalent processor.
- NPU: Neural Processing Unit with 40 TOPS (Tera Operations per Second).
- 8 logical processors
- 256 GB storage capacity
Side note:
- Recall will be automatically enabled on the devices with Snapdragon X Series processors.
- However, the computers that are running other supported processors will have to be upgraded to version 24H2 in order to run the AI timeline feature.
3. Ensure That Your Computer has Sufficient Storage
Keep in mind that if you want to enable the Windows 11 Recall feature, your computer needs to have at least 50GB of free storage. More details on this front later…
4. Windows 11 Recall Will Automatically Pause Saving Screenshots If…
Bear in mind that the Recall will automatically stop saving screenshots on your Windows computer as soon as the device has less than 25 GB of free storage space.
5. Recall is Optimized for Only Select Languages…
Note that the Recall is currently optimized for select languages including –
- English
- French
- German
- Japanese
- Spanish
- Chinese (Simplified)
6. Enable Recall on Your Copilot+PC
- Head over to the Settings app -> Privacy & security -> Recall snapshots page.
- Now, ensure that the toggle next to “Save snapshots” is turned on.
Going forward, the Recall button will show up in the System Tray and the Taskbar. It will run in the background, allowing you to track activities intuitively.
7. Instantly Open Recall on Your PC
With the help of the Win+J shortcut, you can instantly open Recall on your PC. Alternatively, selecting the Recall icon in the taskbar/system tray will also let you bring up Recall.
8. Smartly Review Your Activity
Reviewing activity in Recall feels like a convenient affair – only if you know how it’s done the right way. The timeline is intentionally broken into several segments that represent the blocks of time in which the snapshots were captured. Hovering over the timeline allows you to review your activity in a specific preview window.
9. Use Filters to Search with Recall
Making the most of natural language and neat filters, you can search snapshots at your pace in Recall. For times when you don’t want to deal with the physical keyboard, you can also take full advantage of the microphone to speak your query.
Though Recall shows results from all apps where it found matches, you can narrow down your results by making the best use of the filters. Results are listed under the headings of text matches and visual matches in order to make your task of retrieving a particular item more convenient.
Besides, some items are listed as Close Match and Related Match. While close matches consist of at least one of the search terms or images you are looking for, related matches show results that are quite similar to your query.
10. What is Screenray in Recall and How does it Work?
When you select a snapshot to view, Recall automatically triggers the “Screenray” and allows it to run on top of your snapshot. What makes the screenray so handy is the ability to thoroughly analyze what is inside a snapshot and lets you interact with the specific elements in the snapshot. As soon as screenray becomes active, the cursor turns blue and white as well as seamlessly changes its shape based on the type of element in the snapshot.
11. Pause or Resume Windows 11 Recall Snapshots
Pausing or resuming Recall snapshots is dead simple.
- To pause Recall, hit the Recall icon in the system tray and choose Pause until tomorrow. Snapshots will be instantly paused and they will auto-resume at 12:00 AM. Once the snapshots are paused, a slash appears in the Recall system tray icon for confirmation.
- To manually resume snapshots, hit the Recall icon in the system tray and choose Resume snapshots.
12. Permanently Disable Recall
If you no longer want to use Recall on your PC, you have the absolute freedom to turn it off.
- Go to the Settings app on your PC -> Privacy & security feature -> Recall snapshots page -> turn off the switch next to Save Snapshots.
13. Which Browsers Support Windows 11 Recall?
It’s also important to remember that only selected browsers support Recall. As a result, you need to use a supported browser in order to let Recall filter websites and automatically filter private browsing activity.
Here is the is the list of Recall-supported browsers:
- Microsoft Edge
- Firefox
- Opera
- Google Chrome
Note:
- For Chromium-based browsers that are not listed above, Recall will filter private browsing activity only. That means it won’t let you block specific websites.
14. Stop Windows 11 Recall from Recording a Specific Website
Don’t want “Recall” to record a specific website? No worries! You can block the timeline feature from recording a particular website. Save it for times when you are engaged in private browsing and wish to have utmost privacy – let alone allowing Recall to keep the searches for good.
- On your PC, launch the Settings app -> Privacy & security -> Recall & snapshots settings page.
- Now, click Add Website -> enter the website you would like to filter and hit the Add button to confirm.
15. Stop Windows 11 Recall from Recording a Specific App
Likewise, you can also prevent Recall from recording a specific app on your Copilot+PC.
- Dive into the Settings app on your PC -> Privacy & security -> Recall & snapshots settings page.
- Now, select the “Add app” option -> select the preferred app you would like to filter from Recall snapshots.
16. Be Warned That Recall Will Still Capture Screenshots Even If…
Even if you have blocked Recall from recording a website or app, it will continue to do so in two scenarios.
One scenario: If Recall is launched on your computer or the “Now” option is selected in Recall, in that case, a snapshot will be captured even when you are using blocked apps, blocked websites, or InPrivate windows. The good thing is these snapshots won’t be saved by Recall.
Second scenario: If you happen to send the information from such a snapshot to another app, Windows will create a temp file in C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Temp to share the content. However, after the content has been transferred over to the app you chose to use, the temporary file is automatically deleted.
17. How Much Storage Space Can You Allocate for Recall on Your Copilot+PC?
It’s worth reiterating that the amount of disk space you can allocate to Recall entirely depends on how much storage is available on your PC. For better clarity, let’s have a quick look at the storage space options for Recall:
- 256 GB storage capacity on a Windows PC: 25 GB (default), 10 GB storage allocation options for Recall
- 512 GB storage capacity on a PC: 75 GB (default), 50 GB, 25 GB storage allocation options for Recall
- 1 TB, or more storage capacity on a PC: 150 GB (default), 100 GB, 75 GB, 50 GB, 25 GB storage allocation options for Recall
18. Change How Much Storage Space Recall Can Use on Your PC
As per your needs, you can change how much storage space Recall can use to store snapshots on your PC.
- On your PC, head over to the Settings app -> Expand the Storage settings.
- Now, tweak the maximum storage for snapshots limit by selecting the preferred limit from the drop-down list.
- Once this limit is reached, the oldest snapshots will be automatically deleted.
19. Delete Recall Snapshots
Whether you would like to wipe out the useless snapshots or wish to recover some storage, you can manually clean up the clutter as well.
- To do so, expand the Delete Snapshots settings.
- Now, you can wipe out all snapshots or snapshots within a particular timeframe.
- If you want to delete all snapshots, click Delete All.
- To delete snapshots from a particular timeframe, first, choose a timeframe from the drop-down list and hit Delete snapshots.
20. Best Windows 11 Keyboard Shortcuts to Speed Up Your Productivity
If you are fond of keyboard shortcuts, chances are you would be mighty pleased to know that Recall supports several shortcuts to let you double down on productivity.
| Keyboard shortcut | Action |
| Win+J | Open Recall |
| Home | Go to the beginning of the timeline |
| End | Go to the end of the timeline |
| Tab | The “Initial Tab” will take you into the timeline segment. Using the “Additional tab”, you will move to the next timeline segment to the right. The right arrow takes you to the next timeline segment to the right. |
| Shift+Tab | The shortcut will let you move to the left – the previous timeline segment. You can also use the left arrow to move to the previous timeline to the left. |
| Ctrl+right arrow | Lets you drag the time indicator to the right arrow |
| Ctrl+left arrow | Lets you drag the time indicator to the left arrow |
| Enter | Will take you to the first snapshot in a particular segment and also put the entire focus on the snapshot |
21. Best Keyboard Shortcuts for Recall Screenray
| Keyboard Shortcut | Action |
| Enter | Will take you into a snapshot. You can also use the “Enter” shortcut to get into an element and navigate to sub-elements within the parent element |
| Tab | Lets you move to the next item in the top-level group |
| Esc | Lets back up a level when navigating |
| Arrow keys | Allows you to move in the direction indicated by the selected arrow key in the current level |
| Ctrl + left/right arrow | Allows you to move to the next or previous word in the group. But if the text within the group isn’t selected, it will let you select the first or last word in the group. It will also let you move to the first or last word in a multiword selection. |
| Ctrl + Shift + left/right arrow | Lets you add or remove words from a multiword selection. |
| Ctrl +A | Lets you select all text within a group |
| Space | Allows you to open the context menu for the selected item or text. Note that if an item or text isn’t already selected, it will allow you to select all of the text for the context menu. |
| Ctrl + C | Copies the selected item |
| Home | When navigating within a group, it allows you to focus to the first item in the group. |
| End | When navigating within a group, it lets you focus the last item in the group. |
Wrapping up!
There you have it! I hope you will now be able to make the most of Recall. As this AI feature is still new and yet to see the light of day officially, I’m going to add more tricks to this guide. Therefore, make sure to bookmark this article so that you can keep track of the latest updates.
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