Enable or Disable Recall Snapshots in Windows 11 Tutorial (2024)

This tutorial will show you how to enable or disable the Recall snapshots feature for your account or all users in Windows 11 on Copilot+ PCs.

Recall is an upcoming preview experience exclusive to Copilot+ PCs that will help you easily find and remember things you've seen using natural language. To help provide you with that "photographic" memory, Windows saves snapshots of your screen every five seconds while content on the screen is different from the previous snapshot. You can quickly search your snapshots to find things on your Copilot+ PC. For example, content you've seen in apps, websites, images, and documents. Recall doesn't record audio or save continuous video.

You're always in control of what's saved as a snapshot. You can disable saving snapshots, pause temporarily, filter applications and websites, and delete your snapshots at any time.

To help maintain your privacy, Recall processes your content locally on the Copilot+ PC and securely stores it only on your device. Snapshots are encrypted by Device Encryption or BitLocker, which are enabled by default on Windows 11. Recall doesn't share snapshots with other users that are signed into Windows on the same device. Microsoft can't access or view the snapshots.

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

Your PC needs the following minimum system requirements for Recall:

• A Copilot+ PC
• 16 GB RAM
• 8 logical processors
• 256 GB storage capacity
  • To enable Recall, you’ll need at least 50 GB of storage space free
  • Saving screenshots automatically pauses once the device has less than 25 GB of storage space

References:

1 Open Settings (Win+I).

2 Click/tap on Privacy & security on the left side, and click/tap on Recall & snapshots on the right side.

3 Under Snapshots, turn on (default) or off Save snapshots for what you want. (see screenshot below)

4 You can now close Settings if you like.

1 Open the Local Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc).

2 Navigate to the location below in the left pane of Local Group Policy Editor. (see screenshot below)

User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows AI​

3 In the right pane of Windows AI, double click/tap on the Turn off Saving Snapshots for Windows policy to edit it. (see screenshot above)

4 Do step 5 (enable) or step 6 (disable) below for what you want.

5Enable Recall Snapshots for All Users

This is the default setting to allow using Option One.

A) Select (dot) Not Configured. (see screenshot below)​

B) Click/tap on OK, and go to step 7.​

6Disable Recall Snapshots for All Users

This will override Option One.

A) Select (dot) Enabled. (see screenshot below)​

B) Click/tap on OK, and go to step 7.​

7 You can now close the Local Group Policy Editor if you like.

You must be signed in as an administrator to use this option.

1 Do step 2 (enable) or step 3 (disable) below for what you would like to do.

2Enable Recall Snapshots for All Users

This is the default setting to allow using Option One.

A) Click/tap on the Download button below to download the file below, and go to step 4 below.​

Enable_user-choice_Recall_snapshorts.reg​

(Contents of REG file for reference)

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\PolicyManager\default\WindowsAI\DisableAIDataAnalysis]"value"=dword:00000000[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsAI]"DisableAIDataAnalysis"=-[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsAI]"DisableAIDataAnalysis"=-

3Disable Recall Snapshots for All Users

This will override Option One.

A) Click/tap on the Download button below to download the file below, and go to step 4 below.​

Disable_Recall_snapshorts_for_all_users.reg​

(Contents of REG file for reference)

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsAI]"DisableAIDataAnalysis"=dword:00000001[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsAI]"DisableAIDataAnalysis"=dword:00000001

4 Save the REG file to your desktop.

5 Double click/tap on the downloaded REG file to merge it.

6 When prompted, click/tap on Run, Yes (UAC), Yes, and OK to approve the merge.

7 You can now delete the downloaded REG file if you like.

That's it,
Shawn Brink