Brave Software announced its privacy-focused browser will block Microsoft’s Windows Recall from capturing screenshots of Brave windows by default, aiming to protect user privacy.
Windows Recall is an optional Windows feature designed to take screenshots of active windows every few seconds, analyze them, and allow Windows 11 users to search for text within these snapshots using natural language. This feature’s purpose is to facilitate quick information retrieval regarding past Windows activities.
The feature has drawn criticism due to its potential to expose sensitive user data, including passwords, emails, health records, and financial information. Microsoft subsequently enhanced security by offering methods for software providers to opt out of Windows Recall and by securing data with Windows Hello Enhanced Sign-in Security (ESS).
Brave has implemented a technical feature to prevent Recall from capturing its window content. A Brave announcement stated, “Given Brave’s focus on privacy-maximizing defaults and what is at stake here (your entire browsing history), we have proactively disabled Recall for all Brave tabs.” The company emphasized, “We think it’s vital that your browsing activity on Brave does not accidentally end up in a persistent database, which is especially ripe for abuse in highly-privacy-sensitive cases such as intimate partner violence.”
A Brave GitHub issue detailed that developers used Microsoft’s SetInputScope API, setting the input scope to IS_PRIVATE for all Brave browser windows. This action signals to Windows that the content should not be captured or indexed by Recall. The GitHub issue noted, “Microsoft says that a Web browser can use SetInputScope to set the scope to be IS_PRIVATE to make sure that Recall doesn’t save the user’s browsing history.” It added, “We can force that to be true for all windows in renderer_widget_host_view.”
This change is active in Brave Nightly builds and will be propagated to stable releases in upcoming weeks. Users who prefer to utilize Recall can enable it through Brave’s settings.
In May, encrypted messenger Signal similarly blocked Windows Recall. Signal enabled the DRM management flag within its program, preventing Microsoft’s software from capturing screenshots. However, this method might pose issues for accessibility software like screen readers, so Signal provides an option to disable this setting.
