What just happened? During the launch event for its Copilot+ PCs, Microsoft announced the AI-based "Recall" feature that can take automatic screenshots on Windows devices every few seconds. This feature was designed exclusively for Copilot+ PCs with a dedicated NPU. However, one developer has created an app that allows people to use this feature on unsupported devices.
The person behind the app is well-known Windows enthusiast Albacore, who told Tom's Hardware that the software lets users run Recall on their unsupported computers without any registry edits or other hacks. Called AmperageKit, the app currently works only on some Arm64 PCs running Windows 11 24H2 build 26100.712.
Other versions of 24H2 apparently do not have the necessary OS-level files to support the app. Thus, users with Arm-powered PCs must download the specific build from UUP Dump to try out the new feature. If you have an Arm64 PC and want to try AmperageKit, head over to the app's official GitHub page to download the software. The developer has explained the installation process in the Readme.txt, so make sure to review it before getting started.
Albacore first managed to get Recall running on an unsupported device last month, posting a short proof-of-concept video showcasing the feature on a traditional Windows 11 PC without a built-in NPU. While the process currently only works on Arm64 PCs, Albacore believes it could also work on devices powered by x86-64 processors from Intel and AMD in the future.
According to Microsoft, Recall performs OCR, object detection, and other actions using small on-device AI models powered by a dedicated neural processing unit (NPU), which offers parallelized performance while being highly efficient. However, without an NPU, the AI operations are performed by the CPU and GPU, resulting in slower performance and increased power consumption.
While Recall can theoretically be enabled on unsupported PCs, it's unclear how many people will actually want to do it. The feature has already become highly controversial, with many users fearing it could be a privacy nightmare.
Privacy advocates argue that Recall will not hide sensitive information such as passwords and financial details during transactions on banking apps and websites, potentially jeopardizing users' privacy and security.