This tool unlocks Windows' AI-powered Recall feature for unsupported PCs

During its Copilot AI and Surface event in May, Microsoft unveiled Recall, an AI-powered feature for Windows created to help you find anything you've ever looked at on your PC. The feature, Microsoft said, is exclusively available on the recently launched and future Copilot+ PCs, which are devices that come with onboard neural processing units (NPUs) for AI tasks. Now, someone using the pseudonym Albacore has released a console Windows app on Github called Amperage that will allow users to run Recall even on older computers that the feature doesn't officially support.

The tool can only enable Recall on computers with Arm64-based SoCs, which means they have to be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon, a Microsoft SQ or an Ampere chipset. Users also have to make sure they're running Windows 11 version 24H2 build 26100.712, because older and newer beta versions of the OS don't have the components needed to activate the feature. As The Verge notes, though, future iterations of the tool may be able to unlock Recall for more devices, seeing as AMD- and Intel-based Copilot+ PCs are expected to be available later this year.

Recall works by taking snapshots of the PC while the user is on it, storing them locally on the computer and then using local multi-modal small language models to recognize text, images and videos on them. If a user wants to find something they previously looked at on their PC — whether it's an image, a website, a document or an email — they can search the Recall timeline. Microsoft said it will work even if the user types in vague contextual clues in case they can't remember exact phrases or descriptions. And since the snapshots Recall takes are stored locally and offline, users' data are supposed to remain private and secure.