What to know
- Windows senior product manager Brandon Leblanc has said that the Recall feature’s listing on ‘Windows Features’ is a bug that will be fixed in an upcoming update.
- Being listed under Control Panel’s ‘Windows Features’ dialog had many assuming that it could be uninstalled.
- Currently, the Recall feature cannot be uninstalled or removed completely.
The latest Windows 11 had the tech community, including us, believing that Microsoft had finally made it possible to completely uninstall its controversial Recall feature. Unfortunately, Microsoft has come out to say that it was nothing but a bug that “will be fixed in an upcoming update.”
In a statement to the Verge, Brandon LeBlanc said: “We are aware of an issue where Recall is incorrectly listed as an option under the ‘Turn Windows features on or off’ dialog in Control Panel.”
Microsoft has been quiet in recent days about Recall – an AI feature that saves snapshots of much of what you do on a computer every 5 seconds for later retrieval. But doomed over its security loopholes from the start, the feature is yet to be launched on Copilot+ PCs.
Microsoft has since implemented many general controls, such as making Recall an opt-in feature, providing an option to disable it, and encrypting the stored data, though many argue they should’ve been there in the first place. Which is why the recent update had many praising Microsoft for redressing issues quickly.
It’s likely that the company may include an uninstaller option for Recall for EU users in order to comply with their Digital Markets Act.
The feature will be released to Windows Insiders for testing in October. Whether or not there is an uninstaller then will tell us more about Microsoft’s plan. As of now, there is no official way to uninstall Recall.
