Microsoft has quietly withdrawn Windows 11 24H2 after Recall privacy fiasco

When Microsoft announced the new Recall feature that is coming to Windows 11 later this year, privacy concerns were very quickly voiced by many.

In response to this, the company announced that Recall would not be enabled by default and would be made an opt-in feature. This PR move was made very publicly for maximum attention, but Microsoft has also withdrawn the build of Windows 11 which provided early access to Recall.

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It is a few weeks since Microsoft released Windows 11 version 24H2 to the Release Preview Channel. But less than a month after this build was made available to beta testers it has been withdrawn... with little fanfare.

Although Microsoft has not made a big announcement about the fact that the Release Preview build of the next major update to Windows has been pulled, it has quietly updated the release notes for this almost-but-not-quite-ready build:

We are temporarily pausing the rollout of Windows 11, version 24H2 to the Release Preview Channel. We will resume the rollout in the coming weeks.

This is all Microsoft has to say about removing Windows 11 24H2, but the very vocal backlash about Recall is almost certainly a contributing factor. With this build being the one that will push out Recall to compatible machines, the company's developers are now probably scrabbling to make last minute changes.

But while tweaks to Recall are the most likely reason for withdrawing Windows 11 24H2 from the Release Preview channel, this build has various other problems as well -- in fact, it is surprisingly problematic for a build which is on the verge of a full release.

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