Microsoft adds a Search the Web capability to Windows Recall

For Insiders in the Canary Channel (Build 26236), Microsoft has given them a fresh Windows 11 build. Although the official change log focuses on other changes, people who love Windows have found a couple of new characteristics connected to Recall and privacy settings in this recent version.

Recall is a characteristic that allows you to look for image content within Windows 11. It brings an extra choice called “Search the Web,” which will search for any text recognized from the picture.

This characteristic is turned off as a standard function in build 26236, but its working method isn’t instantly obvious. This feature might use Bing by Microsoft to search for webpages related to the text found in an image, but it’s not certain yet.

The “Search the web” function in Recall needs a separate app called ViveTool, but it is unknown if Microsoft will officially support this feature. Microsoft has been testing an approach to allow third-party apps to be seen in the system’s Share dialog, a characteristic that also needs activation via ViveTool.

It will be interesting to see where this leads. If you remember, Windows Recall has been massively booed by Windows users and critics as a major threat to security and privacy, and for a good reason. Security experts showed just how easy it is to hack the tool, and Microsoft itself was ambivalent towards Windows Recall before deciding to remove it and make it completely optional.

However, with features such as Search the Web in Windows Recall, which is found hidden in Insider builds, it’s clear that the Redmond-based tech giant does not want the tool to go just yet. So we should expect dozens of other features in the following weeks and months before its release in the Windows 11 24H2 update.

What do you think about it?