5 apps you should be using instead of the default ones on Windows 11
It's been over five months since Copilot+ PCs launched, and just as long since those PCs have been waiting for the controversial Recall feature. Today, that wait is finally over for some users, as Microsoft is finally making Recall available to Windows Insiders in the Dev channel.
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Along with Recall, build 26120.2415 also brings the first implementation of Click To Do, another big Copilot+ feature that was announced at the beginning of October.
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Recall is finally arriving, plus a lot more
Recall is finally here
For Snapdragon PCs only
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For the unfamiliar, Recall is a feature where Windows 11 will save snapshots of just about anything you do on your computer, and it then lets you trace back your steps to go back to anything you were doing before. If you turn off your PC and then want to go back to your work the next morning, Recall can help you do that. But it's also much more than that, because you can find anything you were working on in the past few weeks or months and search for it using whatever you can remember. If you looked at an image of a dinosaur, you can include the word "dinosaur" in your search, and it will find whatever you were doing that contained that image, for example.
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Recall comes with some important guardrails to help prevent unwanted incidents, though. Certain kinds of content will prevent snapshots from being saved. For example, if you're using a private browsing window in your browser, that will be excluded. Most browsers also let you block specific websites from being saved to Recall. Additionally, Recall will try to recognize sensitive data such as credit card information or passwords and prevent saving those snapshots as well, with Microsoft encouraging users to send feedback if anything slips through the cracks. You can also pause snapshots temporarily at any given time using the Recall icon on the taskbar, and you can delete snapshots after the fact, too.
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In order to use Recall, you first need to open the Recall app, so it won't be enabled by default. Interestingly, Windows 11 Enterprise will actually remove Recall entirely by default. though IT admins can choose to enable it as desired. Microsoft also reiterates that snapshots are never uploaded to the internet, whether it's to Microsoft itself or third parties.
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Like other Copilot+ features, Recall is currently exclusive to Snapdragon X series PCs, but Intel Lunar Lake and AMD Ryzen AI 300 HX processors will be getting full Copilot+ support soon.
Click To Do is along for the ride
But only within Recall
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Arriving alongside Recall is another exciting Copilot+ feature, Click To Do. The initial implementation is limited to Recall, meaning you can only use Click To Do on your Recall snapshots, not during regular use of the computer. However, that is coming in a future update.
Click To Do is a feature where Copilot+ can be summoned to analyze the contents of your screen and allow you to take action on them. In this initial release, Click To Do can action two kinds of items: text and images.
For text, Click To Do will provide these options:
Copy Open with Search the web Open website (for URLs) Send email (for email addresses)
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Microsoft says it's working on "more intelligent" text actions for the future, too. As for images, you have the following options:
Copy Save as Share Open with Visual search with Bing Blur background with Photos Erase objects with Photos Remove background with Paint
Again, this feature is currently only available within Recall, but in the future, you'll be able to summon Click To Do during regular use by just holding the Windows key and clicking the mouse, or though a range of other methods, including a keyboard shortcut or using the Snipping Tool.
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This feature is also exclusive to Snapdragon PCs for now, but will come to Intel and AMD Copilot+ PCs soon.
How to get the new features
If you have a Snapdragon-powered PC and you want to try out Recall and Click To Do today, you need to go into the Windows Insider Program page in the Settings app (under Windows Update) and sign up for the Dev Channel if you haven't already.
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Once you've signed up for preview builds and installed today's build (26120.2415), check Windows Update again to make sure the Recall and Click To Do models are being downloaded. Once they download and install you should be ready to use these features.
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This build also includes a few other improvements, including a redesigned Windows Hello experience and improvements to Narrator. Keep in mind that once you join the Dev channel, you generally won't be able to go back to a stable release of Windows 11. You'll need to pay attention to when the Dev and Beta channels may overlap so that you can switch to the Beta channel, and hopefully work your way back to a stable build over time. Alternatively, you can do a clean install of Windows.
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