Messaging app Signal has no love for Windows Recall. With a new setting, it prevents Recall from taking screenshots of your chat conversations in the Windows app.
Windows Recall has been available in preview for a few weeks. The Windows feature, which takes screenshots of your screen that you can search with AI, has been facing headwinds since its announcement a year ago. Signal is going a step further and will actively block Recall in the desktop app.
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When Microsoft announced Recall a year ago, it faced backlash. No one seemed to be waiting for every mouse click to be recorded. To push Recall through, Microsoft made some concessions. Recall is not automatically enabled, and you have the option to filter out “sensitive content” such as passwords or incognito browser windows from the screenshots.
No Prying Eyes
Messaging applications like Signal are not considered sensitive content by Microsoft unless you manually set them as such, and Signal is not pleased with this. It criticizes that Microsoft doesn’t give it a say in what Recall can and cannot capture. So Signal is taking matters into its own hands.
In a blog post, Signal announces a new “screen security” feature for the Windows app. The new setting was specifically designed for Recall and thus only works in Windows. With screen security enabled, no screenshots can be taken of your chat conversations in Signal, not even by AI. Recall screenshots of the Signal app will then appear pitch black.
Signal prides itself on being a privacy-friendly alternative to WhatsApp. The messaging application has been rapidly gaining users in recent weeks and wants to maintain the momentum. For Signal, Recall capturing your conversations is a breach of its promise.
You can only test Windows Recall if you have a Microsoft-approved Copilot+ PC. The feature uses the local computing power in the processor’s NPU. Our editorial team has already tried Recall, and in this analysis we share our extensive first impressions.