Copilot+ PC: Click to Do and Recall

Windows 11 supports numerous AI capabilities, but the best experiences require a Copilot+ PC, a new class of AI PC that includes a powerful and efficient Neural Processing Unit (NPU). Copilot+ PCs can run sophisticated AI workloads locally–on-device–against Small Language Models (SMLs), so these features don’t require an Internet connection or a paid, cloud-based AI service.

Granted, you don’t need a Copilot+ PC to use many of the AI features that Windows 11 offers. Those AI features that rely on cloud-hosted Large Language Models (LLMs) are available to all Windows 11 users, albeit with a few limitations:

• Connectivity. Your PC must be online to access these AI features.
• Subscription. Most of the cloud-based AI features in Windows 11 have usage limits unless you pay for a Microsoft 365 Personal, Family, or Premium subscription.

With a Copilot+ PC, you get the best of both worlds: All the AI features that Windows 11 offers plus all the local AI features that are unique to AI PCs and Copilot+ PCs.

Windows 11, AI PCs, and Copilot+ PCs

Understanding which AI-based Windows 11 features work for everyone and which require AI PCs or Copilot+ PCs can be confusing. So it may be helpful to understand what’s available depending on the type of PC you have.

AI features in Windows 11

Windows 11 includes a growing set of AI features integrated throughout the system and in its in-box apps. Many of these features provide so-called generative AI capabilities, meaning they can be used to create new content or edit existing content.

The in-box apps in Windows 11 ship with an extensive and always growing set of AI features and functionality that’s available to all users. Some key examples include:

• Copilot in Windows 11. This conversational AI-powered assistant brings the ever-improving productivity and creation capabilities of the cloud-based Microsoft Copilot to your PC.
• Copilot in Microsoft Edge. Microsoft’s web browser also includes an integrated version of Microsoft Copilot.
• Notepad. The Writing tools in Notepad use cloud-based AI.
• Paint. The Remove background, Image Creator, and Generative erase all rely on cloud-based AI.
• Photos. The Erase and Background tools both use cloud-based AI.
• Clipchamp. The Create video with AI wizard, Text to speech tool, Autocaptions, and other features in this web-based video editor all use cloud-based AI.
• Snipping Tool. The Scan text tool uses cloud-based AI for Optical character recognition (OCR).

AI features unique to AI PCs

PC makers market laptops and desktop PCs with a CPU, GPU, and NPU integrated into a single system on a chip (SoC) design as AI PCs to differentiate them from their NPU-less predecessors. These PCs provide all Windows 11 features, of course, but they only offer a small subset of the features provided by Copilot+ PCs. In fact, there’s just a single unique feature:

• Windows Studio Effects. Any modern PC with an NPU of any kind–in other words, an AI PC–can use at least a subset of the available audio and video effects in Windows Studio Effects. Unfortunately, the exact audio and video effects you get can vary by PC.

AI features unique to Copilot+ PCs

If you’re buying a new Windows 11 PC, especially a laptop, a Copilot+ PC is your best choice. This is a new class of AI PCs that meets specific hardware requirements well above the minimums Microsoft requires for Windows 11. Key among them is a powerful and efficient Neural Processing Unit (NPU) that enables powerful, on-device AI capabilities.

Because so many of these unique Copilot+ PCs features are delivered through existing in-box apps and experiences, I cover them in other parts of the book. But key in-box apps that provide additional features when used with a Copilot+ PC include:

• Auto SR. Automatic super resolution (Auto SR) is available only on Windows 11 on Arm-based Copilot+ PCs.
• Live Captions. This accessibility tool provides real-time language translation capabilities if you have a Copilot+ PC.
• Notepad. With a Copilot+ PC, the Writing tools in Notepad can optionally use local AI instead of cloud-based AI.
• Paint. The Cocreator, Generative fill (on Windows 11 on Arm only), Object select, and Sticker generator tools in Paint all require a Copilot+ PC.
• Photos. The Categories feature and the Image Creator, Relight, Restyle Images, and Super resolution tools in Photos all require a Copilot+ PC.
• Settings. A Settings agent in the Settings app lets you change many settings directly from the search results drop-down on a Copilot+ PC.
• Shared audio. This feature, accessible from Quick settings, lets you play the same audio output to two compatible Bluetooth LE headphones, earbuds, hearing aids, or similar devices simultaneously.
• Snipping Tool. The Perfect screenshot tool requires a Copilot+ PC.
• Windows Search. The in-box search functionality in Windows 11 is enhanced with natural language capabilities when you have a Copilot+ PC.
• Windows Studio Effects. Those with a Copilot+ PC gain access to the full suite of audio and video effects in Windows Studio Effects.

Copilot+ PCs also offer a few powerful and unique in-box apps that are not available in Windows 11 otherwise. These apps are the focus of the rest of this chapter.

Click to Do

Click to Do is arguably the most useful and powerful Windows 11 capability that’s unique to Copilot+ PCs. This tool uses local AI to identify text and images you see on-screen so that you can take actions with that content that includes editing the content, creating new content, or learning more about the content.

When Click to Do is active, a toolbar appears in the top-center of your screen and your mouse cursor transforms into a white circle surrounded by a purple and blue aura. You can then use this cursor to mouse over and select the content you wish to take action on.

That selection can be as simple as clicking a specific block of text or an image. Or you can select text as you do in Notepad and other apps, by clicking the mouse button at the start of a selection and then dragging to select more.

You can also use the Click to Do toolbar to change the selection method from the mouse cursor to a rectangular or freeform selection, each of which supports drag-based sizing. You can also “unpin” the toolbar, which just hides it for this session only.

When you select the text or image you want, a pop-up menu of available actions appears. This varies by content type and is described later in this chapter.

You dismiss Click to Do by tapping the Esc key or by clicking the “Close Click to Do” (“x”) button in the toolbar.

Defaults

Click to Do is enabled by default in Windows 11 on Copilot+ PCs.

You can open Click to Do via:

• Start. You can use Start and Windows Search to find and launch Click to Do.
• Taskbar. A shortcut to Click to Do is typically pinned to the Taskbar by default.
• Keyboard shortcut. This is the easiest way to launch Click to Do: Type Windows key + Q.

Tip: You can also launch Click to Do by holding down the Windows key and clicking the primary mouse button.

Customize

Click to Do can’t be customized in any meaningful way. But you can disable it if you’d like. To do so, open the Settings app and navigate to Privacy & security > Click to Do.

Here, you can toggle the “Click to Do” option “On” or “Off” as needed.

Tip: You can’t uninstall Click to Do.

Do more with text you see on-screen

To take action on text you see on-screen, launch Click to Do, mouse over the specific text, and click the mouse button. The Click to Do pop-up menu provides the following options:

• Copy. This action copies the selected text to the Clipboard so you can paste and use it in another app.
• Open with. This action provides a list of compatible apps you can use to open the selected text. That is, it copies the text to the Clipboard, opens the app, and pastes the text into that app.

• Search the web. This action opens Bing in Microsoft Edge–yes, even if it’s not your default web browser–and performs a search.

• Summarize. This action opens a small “Summarize” window that displays an AI-generated summary of the selected text. You can click the “Copy” button in this window to copy the summary to the Clipboard. If you use this feature a lot, you can save a step and automatically copy any Click to Do-based text summary by clicking the “Auto Copy Settings” and then choosing “Copy text automatically” in the menu that appears.

• Create a bulleted list. This action works like Summarize except that the summary it creates is in bulleted list form. It supports the same “Copy” and “Auto Copy” features as Summarize.

• Rewrite. This action provides a submenu with “Casual,” “Formal,” and “Refine” options. Choosing any of them will open a small “Rewrite” window that displays an AI-generated rewrite of the selected text in the selected style. It supports the same “Copy” and “Auto Copy” features as Summarize.

Do more with an image you see on-screen

Click to Do offers a selection of actions you can take on images as well.

These include:

• Copy. This action copies the image to the Clipboard so you can paste and use it in another app.
• Share. This action opens a standard Share sheet so you can
• Save as. This action opens a system “Save as” dialog box so you can save the image as a file anywhere in your PC’s file system.
• Open with. This action provides a list of compatible apps you can use to open the selected image.
• Visual Search with Bing. This action opens Bing in Microsoft Edge–yes, even if it’s not your default web browser–and performs what’s called a reverse image search so you can find out more about the subject of the image.

• Blur background with Photos. This action opens the image in the Background page of the Photos image editing experience so you can blur, remove, or replace its background.

• Erase objects with Photos. This action opens the image in the Erase page of the Photos image editing experience so you can use generative erase to remove elements in it.
• Remove background with Paint. This action opens the image in Paint and applies the “Remove background” tool to, yes, remove its background.

Recall

Recall is a Windows 11 feature that’s unique to Copilot+ PCs that takes snapshots–screenshots–of your activities every few seconds as you use your computer and then lets you later browse or search for something you saw in the past. This may sound unsophisticated, but AI is particularly good at image-to-text and image recognition capabilities, and Recall uses both to help locate an item you remember seeing on-screen in the past.

Tip: Because of the potentially sensitive nature of the data stored in its snapshots, you will deal with regular Windows Hello-based Windows Security prompts when you use Recall interactively. I don’t call these out everywhere they can happen, but this behavior, while good-intentioned, can get a bit tedious.

Defaults

Recall is promoted to you during the Windows Setup Out-of-Box Experience (OOBE), but this feature is disabled by default.

Customize

You can enable, configure, and even uninstall Recall if you’d like.

Enable Recall

You have to enable Recall before you can customize this app. To do so, open the Settings app and navigate to Privacy & security > Recall & snapshots.

Configure “Save snapshots” to “On” to enable Recall. When you do, the following changes occur:

• A “Recall” icon appears in the system tray so you can easily access Recall and the snapshots it saves.
• The Recall & snapshots settings page displays several new options so that you can customize Recall further, as discussed in the next section.

Configure Recall

When Recall is enabled, there are several options you can customize in the Settings app by navigating to Privacy & security > Recall & snapshots.

They are:

• Storage. By default, Recall reserves 25 GB, 75 GB, or 150 GB of space on your system disk to store snapshots, depending on the size of that disk. It also retains those snapshots for 90 days by default. You can expand this option to configure either of these options differently if desired.

• Delete snapshots. You can expand this option to delete snapshots from a specific timeframe ranging from the past hour to the past 30 days or just delete all snapshots.

• Filter sensitive information. Enabled by default, this option determines whether Recall prevents a snapshot from being saved when it detects a password, credit card number, or other personal information displayed on-screen.
• Apps to filter. Here, you can manually add one or more apps to the list of apps that will not be captured by a snapshot.

• Websites to filter. This works similarly to above, but for websites.

• Advanced settings. When you click this option, Settings opens an Advanced settings page with two options: “Reset Recall,” which can be used to remove all Recall customizations, and “Customization,” which is enabled by default and provides a Recall home page for you that’s customized with your saved snapshots.

Uninstall Recall

There’s no need to do so, but you can uninstall Recall with the Windows Features control panel. To get started, open Start, search for features, and select “Turn Windows features on or off” from the top of the search results. The Windows Features control panel appears.

Locate “Recall” in the list of features and click it to unselect it. Then, click “OK” and reboot your PC if prompted to do so.

Interact with Recall as you work

Because it runs in the background, Recall is always accessible via its system tray icon, even when the app isn’t running. This icon visually identifies whether Recall is saving snapshots–there’s a line through it if not–and you can mouse over the icon to see both its status and whether the sensitive information filter is on.

When you click this icon, a “Recall” flyout appears.

Available options include:

• Saving snapshots/No snapshots are being saved. This small text-based entry at the top explains whether Recall is saving snapshots.
• Most recent snapshot. A thumbnail of the most recent snapshot appears at the top. You can click this thumbnail to open Recall and view this snapshot in the app.
• Filter app or website. Whichever app or website (in a web browser) you are currently viewing will display here so you can click its “Filter” button to prevent Recall from saving snapshots of it on the fly.
• Open Recall. Click this button to open the Recall app and browse available snapshots.
• Pause until tomorrow. Click this button to pause snapshots until tomorrow.

Tip: You can also pause (or restart) Recall snapshots with Quick settings. The “Recall” quick settings button you’ll find there acts as a toggle for this feature.

• More Recall settings. Click this link to view the Privacy & security > Recall & snapshots page in the Settings app.

Browse and search your Recall snapshots

If you want to locate something you saw on-screen in the past, you can open the Recall app to browse and search your snapshots. The Recall app can be launched in several different ways:

• Start. You can use Start and Windows Search to find and launch the Recall app.
• Taskbar. You can pin a Recall shortcut to the Taskbar and launch it from there.
• Tray icon. You can open the Recall app by clicking the “Recall” tray icon and then clicking “Open Recall” in the flyout that appears.
• Keyboard shortcut. You can quickly open the Recall app by typing Windows key + J.

The Recall app has two main views:

• Home. The Home page displays a grid of thumbnails for your most recent snapshots and the apps you used most recently.
• Timeline. If you want to browse chronologically through all the snapshots Recall has saved, you can do so using a timeline interface with a scrubber on the bottom.

Both views have a prominent search box at the top, and this is probably the best way to find anything with Recall unless you remember the exact date and time of the item you wish to recall. When you search for something with Recall, the results appear as snapshot thumbnails in two sections, Text matches and Visual matches.

Note that Recall search understands natural language. For example, if you were shopping for a particular clothing item on several e-commerce sites several days ago, you might use a search query like A green sweater with stripes or similar.

When you view a snapshot in Recall, Click to Do appears over the captured screen and automatically highlights each text and image element so that you can interact with them. Likewise, the mouse cursor displays as a white circle with a purple and blue aura, as it does when you use Click to Do otherwise, so you can select individual items in the snapshot.

From here, you can navigate backward and forward through the timeline using the scrubber at the bottom or the “Previous snapshot” (“<“) and “Next snapshot” (“>”) buttons that appear on either side of the current snapshot when you mouse into the center of the app window.

In addition to the actions-based capabilities of Click to Do, each snapshot you view in Recall offers the following actions:

• Jump back to app name. Click this button to open the app depicted in the snapshot.
• Hide/Show Click to Do. Click this button to hide (or show) Click to Do and its custom mouse cursor and actions-based options.
• Copy snapshot. Click this button to copy the snapshot as an image to the Clipboard so that it can be pasted in a compatible app like Paint.
• Delete snapshot/Delete all from app name. This split button lets you delete the current snapshot or all snapshots associated with the app you’re viewing in the snapshot.

• Edit with Snipping Tool. This self-explanatory button lets you edit a copy of the snapshot in the Windows 11 screenshot utility, Snipping Tool.