Microsoft took time to make the feature more secure after people objected to some aspects of the original design, but upon early testing, it's not perfect.

Microsoft on Friday started letting people test Recall, its so-called photographic memory search feature for the latest Copilot+ PCs. It doesn't work perfectly, based on an initial evaluation.

It's also a long time coming. Microsoft first touted Recall in May as a prominent feature that would only be available for cutting-edge Copilot+ PCs running the Windows 11 operating system, like the latest Surface Pro. Executives said Recall would use artificial intelligence to take screenshots of your computer screen as you use it, so you can later use keywords to search for words or objects that are present in images you've previously seen.

A backlash from cybersecurity experts about the potential risks of Recall, however, led Microsoft to revamp it. The company encrypted Recall's underlying database and set the feature to be turned off by default. In August, Microsoft said Recall would reach testers in October.

Now the feature is available for certain Copilot+ users. Those whose computers contain Qualcomm Snapdragon chips and neural processing units for AI tasks can download and install a build that comes with Recall. PCs must be enrolled in the dev channel of the Windows Insider Program to be eligible. Copilot+ PCs with AMD or Intel chips are out of luck for now.

Microsoft issues pre-release software like this to let early adopters try things out, so it can address shortcomings before they get to the general public. Recall won't work with some accessibility programs, and if you specify that Recall shouldn't save content from a given website, it might get captured anyway while using the built-in Edge browser, according to a blog post.

Those aren't the only issues. Here are more problems I noticed:

Microsoft did not immediately provide a comment for this article.

Despite the early issues, Recall can be helpful and interesting when it does turn up positive results. And when you'd like to get back to the app or web link you were viewing at the time of the screenshot, clicking a button below the image will take you right back to that moment in time.