3 reasons Pixel Screenshots is what Microsoft Recall should have been

Summary

• Microsoft's Recall feature failed due to storing user data in plain text, leading to indefinite delays.
• Pixel Screenshots by Google beats Recall by providing smarter searching, separation of photos, and more control.
• Pixel Screenshots prioritizes security, only analyzing manually taken screenshots, as opposed to Recall's default capturing.

The flagship feature of Microsoft's new Copilot+ brand for great AI PCs was Recall, and it's supposed to work like a "memory" for your computer. Unfortunately, the company completely botched it. Microsoft touted Recall as being on-device and secure, but security researchers outed Recall as storing user data in plain text. That led to the feature being delayed indefinitely, and we haven't heard much about Recall since — except that Microsoft says it's still coming.

Here's the thing: Microsoft should just call it quits on Recall. Timing is everything in the tech industry, and the time to release Recall came and went. The Copilot+ brand is little more than a marketing name now, and people are still buying Copilot+ PCs thanks to how well the Snapdragon X Elite chipset is performing. More importantly, in the time Microsoft has been trying to fix Recall and the disaster it created, Google shipped a feature called Pixel Screenshots. It's debuting alongside the Google Pixel 9 series and, well, it's exactly what Recall should've been in the first place.

3 Pixel Screenshots fills a need

Our photo libraries have been cluttered with disorganized screenshots for years

Every company is trying to find a use case for artificial intelligence that actually makes sense. While I can see the appeal of a feature like Recall — it remembers the name of that website you forgot and what you named that pesky file — I think it represents Microsoft grasping at straws for a killer Copilot+ feature. No one was really asking for Recall, and without it, Copilot+ is far less interesting. By comparison, Pixel Screenshots actually fixes a problem that many users of the best phones are facing.

The way the Pixel Screenshots app works is quite simple. Every time you take a screenshot, it's pulled into the app. Then, when you need to search for a screenshot, you can use text recognition, AI, and other machine learning smarts to make the process easier. In theory, you can use natural language like "drive to California" or "Valentine's Day dinner" and Pixel Screenshots will find what you're looking for.

A few days back I took a screenshot of driving directions from New York to California in the Google Maps app. So, to test out Pixel Screenshots, I simply searched "drive." Pretty basic, right? Not only did Pixel Screenshots quickly pull up my Google Maps screenshot, but it also found a screenshot of a delivery order from Uber Eats. Narrowing the prompt down to "drive to California" left me with just the Google Maps screenshot.

I don't know if those exact keywords were in either screenshot, and that's the point. I didn't have to specifically think of the exact words or phrases found inside the screenshot I wanted to find so that Google Photos' text recognition would find them. With the Pixel Screenshots app, I just had to say what I was thinking — in natural language — and AI got me the rest of the way.

I've been using Pixel Screenshots for a few days on the Google Pixel 9, and the feature is incredibly useful. It's not designed to help you find the screenshot you just took — it's made to help you comb through weeks, months, and years of screenshots. Many smartphone users find it tricky, or annoying, to navigate through their photos and screenshots combined in the default gallery app. Pixel Screenshots provide a bit of separation, more than Google Photos' sorting and filtering options, between photos, videos, and screenshots.

All the while, Pixel Screenshots adds some utility in the process. Perhaps the thing I like most about the feature is that there's room for growth in a way there might not be for Recall. I could see a future where Pixel Screenshots is the default app for storing, viewing, editing, and searching screenshots. Honestly, I hope that future comes soon, because I'd love to draw a clear line of separation between my real photos and videos and my screenshots and screen recordings.

2 You choose exactly what is analyzed

Pixel Screenshots can only see the screenshots you take, and it's easy to turn off

The reason Recall isn't here is that privacy and security were major concerns associated with the feature. Microsoft wanted Recall to capture your computer's screen most of the time, and let you narrow down the things you didn't want Recall to see. The feature was technically opt-in, as you could uncheck the Recall box during the initial setup process of a Copilot+ PC. But it was the kind of setting most users would probably just click through without changing. If you used Recall, it would automatically prevent itself from capturing screenshots of private browsing windows, and any app or website you told it not to.

Still, with Recall, screenshot capturing was the default. Pixel Screenshots takes the completely opposite approach. It isn't periodically capturing screenshots of your Android phone; it's only viewing the screenshots you take manually. If you don't take a screenshot of it, Pixel Screenshots and its AI algorithms won't see it. Additionally, it all runs on-device and is stored securely.

If you want even more control over what Pixel Screenshots sees, you'll have it. In the app, there's a toggle that lets you disable the AI analysis entirely. For more peace of mind, you can deny or limit photo and video permission at the Android level, in your Pixel's settings app.

If you're wary about trusting a tech conglomerate like Google or Microsoft, I can understand that. However, Google's approach with Pixel Screenshots is definitely how Microsoft should've handled Recall from the start. You should choose exactly what your AI screenshot tool sees; you shouldn't have to tell it exactly what not to capture.

1 Security is at the heart of Pixel Screenshots

Processing is on-device, and phones are often more secure than Windows PCs

All that is fine and good, but the real reason Recall didn't ship on-time was that it was storing user data in plain text. Anyone with access to your machine, whether in person or remotely, could steal information captured by Recall in the plain text files. This was a massive problem, and it's why Pixel Screenshots was developed, announced, and released before Recall even got released to Insiders (we're still waiting).

Pixel Screenshots doesn't have the same problem. For starters, people don't share phones like they share great laptops and PCs, so the security equation is entirely different. If you let a friend or family member borrow your PC, and they can see your entire activity history in plain text, that's a problem. I'm not saying the images stored in Pixel Screenshots are 100% secure, but they're protected by the same Android security features that would safeguard your screenshots anyway. The only difference is that now screenshots are being stored in Pixel Screenshots and Google Photos.

Like Recall, the AI processing in Pixel Screenshots all happens on-device, so that shouldn't be a concern. Again, it's important to emphasize that Recall's big mistake was trying to capture everything you do on your Windows 11 computer and storing it in plain text. Pixel Screenshots only sees the screenshots you take, and they're stored in the same way they would be in Google Photos. This helps Pixel Screenshots provide about 75% of the utility of Recall with effectively zero added security concerns.

It's time for Microsoft to let Recall die

Microsoft had its chance to make Recall a hit feature, but it has already been overshadowed by Apple Intelligence and Pixel Screenshots. Google struck gold with the Pixel Screenshots feature because it puts the user completely in control. If you take a screenshot, it can be analyzed with AI for smarter searching in the Pixel Screenshots app. Nothing that you don't screenshot will be seen, and you have multiple ways to disable the feature altogether.

If Recall worked the same way, it would probably be in the hands of Copilot+ PC users already. Google took the safe route, and Recall is certainly more ambitious than Pixel Screenshots. But I suspect we'll find that consumers would rather take the safe route than the risky one when their data is on the line.