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How to Turn Off Windows Recall With Group Policy

Windows Recall can save snapshots of what appears on your screen. If you leave Turn off saving snapshots for use with Recall unset, Recall does not save snapshots by default, but a user can still turn saving on in the Settings app on a personal device that is not managed. Setting the policy to Enabled stops snapshot saving.

Problems this setup can solve

  • Recall saves snapshots of my screen and I want it to stop.
  • The Settings app lets anyone turn snapshot saving back on, and I want a policy to lock it.
  • I manage several PCs and want to block Recall snapshots on all of them at once.

Before you start

This policy applies to Windows Pro, Enterprise, and Education editions.

Steps

  1. Press Win + R and run gpedit.msc.
  2. Go to Computer Configuration › Administrative Templates › Windows Components › Windows AI and open the Turn off saving snapshots for use with Recall setting.
  3. Set the status to Enabled.
  4. Save the setting.
  5. Open Command Prompt as administrator and run this command to apply the policy right away:
gpupdate /force
  1. Open Settings and check that Recall no longer saves snapshots.

You can read more about the policy itself on the Turn off saving snapshots for use with Recall page.

Apply it with the registry

If you do not use the Group Policy Editor, you can apply the same setting through the registry. The registry value page provides a .reg file, CMD command, or PowerShell command to copy and apply.

Which value does what

The three states have different effects:

  • Enabled also deletes snapshots already saved.
  • Disabled leaves the choice to the user, who can decide whether snapshots are saved.
  • Not Configured means snapshots are not saved by default.

Turning off saving is not the same as removing Recall

A separate policy controls whether Recall is enabled at all, and it works differently from the snapshot policy in this article. With that policy disabled, the Recall component is removed, saved snapshots are deleted, and a restart is needed. That policy is also available on Pro, and it removes the Recall component when disabled.

How to undo it

To undo the change, set the policy to Not Configured and run gpupdate /force. Recall returns to the default behavior described above. To let the user decide instead, set the policy to Disabled.

Cautions

  • Enabling the policy permanently deletes saved snapshots. Review or export anything you need first.
  • This policy does not remove Recall; use the separate removal policy only if removing the component is your goal.

This article is based on the Windows 11 version 26H2 (OS build 26300) policy templates (published 2026-09-29).

References