It looks likeMicrosoftis trying to hide its controversial Recall AI feature, even from the Windows insiders that were supposed to be testing it. Last week, the software giant announced thatRecall would not be partof the Windows build that came with the first generation of Copilot+ PCs, but it also said that Insiders would be testing the feature. Now, the latest Insider Builds of Windows on Arm have stripped all references to Recall and the previous build that had it is no longer available.
As recently as this past weekend, Windows Researcher Albacore discovered a brandnew Recall feature called Screenrayin Windows Insider Canary Build 26236.5000 for arm64 devices. The UI of Recall had also been tweaked to make it easier to navigate through your activity.
But on Tuesday June 18th, the same day that Copilot+ PCs went on sale, Microsoft stopped distribution of Build 26236.5000 to Windows Insiders. “We have temporarily paused the rollout ofWindows 11Insider Preview Build 26236 in the Canary Channel,” the companywrote on its blogTuesday.
Yesterday, June 19th, Microsoft came out with a new Windows Insider Build, version 26241.5000, and it’s missing any trace of Recall. Theoretically, if you already installed Build 26236.5000 and paused updates or, if you made an ISO of 26236.6000, you might be able to run Recall. However, there’s no legit way to download 26236.5000 on your own.
Normally, if you want to download and install an older Insider Build, you can useUUP Dump, a site that lists all the Builds and gives you scripts that will download them and turn them into ISOs for you. However, we got the download script for 26236.5000 from UUP Dump and it gave us an error message saying that the files have been removed from Microsoft’s servers.
So clearly Microsoft feels that Recall is so controversial right now that it doesn’t want anyone to use it. Perhaps we’ll see a new version of Recall appear in a future Insider Build – the company certainly promised as much – but when that will happen is a mystery.
“Recall will now shift from a preview experience broadly available for Copilot+ PCs on July 23, 2025, to a preview available first in the Windows Insider Program (WIP) in the coming weeks,” the company said in ablog postlast week.
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By “in the coming weeks,” Microsoft must have meant not that Insiders would have exclusive access to Recall for a few weeks before launch, but that it would be a few more weeks before Insiders could try it. Still, Recall was available to Insiders even after Microsoft made that announcement, up until the 18th.
Recall drew the ire of privacy andsecurity-conscious users because it keeps a historic record of all of your activity. Researcher Kevin Beaumont foundserious security problemsin a beta version of Recall, including the fact that the data was stored in a relatively-easy-to-access SQLite database. UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) evenannounced an investigationinto the feature.
Without Recall, Copilot+ PCs are left with three very unimpressive exclusive AI features: Codesigner (an image generation feature for Paint), Studio Effects (blurring and filters for your webcam) and Live Captions with translations. We talk about these features and more in ourCopilot+ PC launch live blog.
Avram Piltch is Managing Editor: Special Projects. When he’s not playing with the latest gadgets at work or putting on VR helmets at trade shows, you’ll find him rooting his phone, taking apart his PC, or coding plugins. With his technical knowledge and passion for testing, Avram developed many real-world benchmarks, including our laptop battery test.
