You can’t remove Windows Recall making it mandatory feature

https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/turns-out-you-wont-be-able-to-uninstall-windows-11s-recall-feature-after-all

24 Comments

  1. Low quality, scaremongering article 🤷🏻‍♂️. It can be disabled just like the vast majority of other, uninstallable, “mandatory” Windows components can, but that doesn’t make for a good click bait title now, does it?

    EDIT: the ‘Ackchyually’ guys are all here, thinking they’re winning the argument while the rest of the world has already moved on

  2. You know what that article could have really benefited from? An explanation of what “recall” is. I have no idea still.

  3. But what you can do is never install it. Just don’t use Windows 11. If enough of you don’t use or upgrade to Windows 11 they will change their mind. But only if you do it or in this case don’t do it.

    Microsoft, just don’t do it!

  4. Question, does Windows run well in a Proxmox VM? Been wanting to switch to Ubuntu for a while now but have a few windows-only programs I can’t live without.

  5. Lower-Grapefruit8807 on

    This is completely unacceptable from a personal AND corporate security level. This will never fly. My company will hand me a Mac and wash their hands of this bullshit

  6. Can someone explain this to me, I’m actually curious:  It’s my understanding that you’re still able to disable recall. The common response to this I hear is “what if Microsoft turns it back on after a windows updates?”, so they would prefer to fully uninstall it.  My confusion stems from this: if Microsoft can reenable recall during a Windows update, wouldn’t they be able to reinstall it during an update too? Am I incorrect in this?    Also, isn’t recall currently only in preview builds, and for “copilot+” PCs? How many people genuinely have access to it right now?

    Edit: In addition to the other requirements, recall is opt-in:

    > Recall is now also shipping as off by default, meaning the user has to opt-in to take advantage of it. If the user chooses not to, Recall will remain dormant until the user manually turns it on down the line.

    [Source](https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/microsoft-windows-recall-can-be-uninstalled)

  7. 11 pro user here with a local account only. I do not have recall on the account and disabled it entirely on the PC via regedit.

  8. The article literally says you can turn it off. I don’t really care if the code is there as long as I can keep it from running.

  9. How about this google suggestion? Is this a valid procedure?

    How to disable Windows Recall (Step-by-step guide)
    1. Open Windows Settings (WIN+I).
    2. Select “Privacy & Security” in the sidebar.
    3. Select “Recall & Snapshots.”
    4. Toggle “Save Snapshots” to off.
    5. Select “Delete Snapshots.”
    6. Select “Delete All.”
    7. Close Windows Settings.

    [Source](https://blog.invgate.com/how-to-disable-windows-recall)

  10. SparkStormrider on

    The enshitification of Windows continues. Pretty soon it’ll take 64GB of RAM just to run notepad.

  11. prat_at_the_back on

    Probably a dumb question but if you just change part of the registry and leave it in place, would it be erased and replaced?

  12. Microsoft & Windows 11 – soon to become optional. EOL for Win 10 starting to translate to EOL for Microsoft products.

  13. I’m all for dumping on Microsoft. If outrage over this feature is what gets you to leave Windows and move to Linux, more power to you.

    But like most tech news, this is click-bait and not accurate.

    Microsoft did not remove the ability to disable or remove Windows recall from the OS. Instead, in a sub-menu in Settings, there was an option that was labeled “remove co-pilot”. that showed up in a pre-release version of Windows.

    The context this article is missing, this option to remove Co-pilot never worked. If you used this remove “Co-pilot feature”, nothing happened.

    Removing a button that never worked is not the same thing as “removing the ability to remove co-pilot”

    Microsoft does enough shady/scummy stuff to get angry over. Anger over removing this button is not one of them

  14. I seriously need to look into migrating to Linux. This is the straw that broke the Camels back.

  15. Mission-Argument1679 on

    Clickbait. Windows already made it possible to completely uninstall this feature.

    Try harder, OP