Installing Recall on Windows

Recall supports Windows 10 (22H2+) and Windows 11 on x64 hardware. The desktop app ships as a signed-by-CI but not-EV-signed NSIS installer (.exe), so Windows SmartScreen will prompt for confirmation on first run — see section 3 below for the SmartScreen approval dance.

1. Download

Grab recall-{version}-windows-amd64-installer.exe from the GitHub Releases page. That's the file to download — the release also carries a bare recall-{version}-windows-amd64.exe, which exists only for Recall's in-app updater to fetch; you don't run it directly.

2. Install — run the installer

Double-click the downloaded .exe. NSIS walks you through:

• Accept the licence (Apache-2.0).
• Pick an install path — the default is %LocalAppData%\Programs\Recall\recall.exe (e.g. C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Local\Programs\Recall). This is a per-user install: no administrator prompt, and it's the location Recall updates itself into (see Staying up to date).
• Click Install and let it copy.

When the installer finishes, Recall is available from the Start Menu and on the desktop (if you left the shortcut checkbox ticked).

Upgrading from an older (pre-per-user) install? Recall used to install machine-wide under C:\Program Files. The new installer detects that older copy and removes it automatically — Windows will ask for administrator permission once during that first upgrade so it can clear the old Program Files copy. Your data is untouched (it lives under %AppData%\Recall, not the program folder). If you decline the prompt, the install still completes; just remove the old "Recall" entry from Settings → Apps when convenient.

3. First launch — approve SmartScreen

Recall is signed by GitHub Actions' OIDC keyless flow, which is good enough for gh attestation verify but not good enough to silence Windows SmartScreen on its own. SmartScreen wants an EV (Extended Validation) code-signing certificate — those cost USD 300+/year and the project doesn't have one. So the first time you double-click Recall.exe, Windows will show:

Windows protected your PC Microsoft Defender SmartScreen prevented an unrecognized app from starting. Running this app might put your PC at risk.

To approve it:

1. Click More info in the SmartScreen dialog.
2. A Run anyway button appears — click it.

You only need to do this once per installed version. After Windows has "seen" the binary, subsequent launches skip the prompt.

Verifying the binary before you trust it — section Verifying your download below covers the SHA256 check + the GitHub-attested build provenance. Both close the "is this the binary CI actually built?" gap that SmartScreen's prompt opens.

4. Install Tesseract 5.x

Recall needs Tesseract to read text from your screenshots. Download the 5.x installer from UB-Mannheim:

• tesseract-ocr-w64-setup-5.5.0.20241111.exe (or whichever is the latest 5.x in the list)

Run it with the default options. The default install path is:

C:\Program Files\Tesseract-OCR\tesseract.exe

Recall auto-detects this path on first launch. If you installed Tesseract somewhere else (or earlier installations dropped it under C:\Program Files (x86)\Tesseract-OCR\…), use Settings → Engine → Locate Tesseract… to point it at the binary.

Don't use Tesseract 3.x or 4.x. Those releases predate the Overwatch post-match font and misread "ELIMINATIONS" / "ASSISTS" / "DEATHS" reliably. Recall flags older versions in the Engine row, but the parse-accuracy hit is the real reason to upgrade.

5. Point Recall at your screenshots folder

Recall's first-run Settings hero shows a 2 × 2 picker grid naming each canonical Windows capture source. A green dot on a card means that folder exists on your machine; one click sets it as the watched directory.

If you use something else (a third-party tool, a synced cloud folder, a USB stick), use the Pick a different folder… tile below the grid — opens the standard Windows folder picker.

The Watch Folder toggle on the Parse tab makes Recall auto-parse new screenshots as Overwatch (or your capture tool) writes them.

Staying up to date

Open About Recall (the ⋮ menu → About) to check for updates. It surfaces both Recall releases AND roster patches (new heroes / maps / capture-tool grammars) the parser ships separately from the binary. See Updates & game data for the flow + the SHA-256 verification path. No silent on-mount network calls — the check only fires when you open About.

When a new Recall release is available, you can install it from right there: Recall downloads the new build, verifies its SHA-256 against the release's SHA256SUMS, swaps itself in place under %LocalAppData%\Programs\Recall, and relaunches. (An "Open release page" link is always available as a fallback — and is the only path on a machine-wide install that predates the per-user move, where the program folder isn't writable without elevation.)

Where Recall stores its data

Recall organises everything by profile — each profile (your main account, alts, anything) gets its own settings + match database. The install root is:

%AppData%\Recall\

(typically C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Roaming\Recall\)

Inside it, the default main profile's data lives at:

%AppData%\Recall\profiles\main\
  ├── settings.json
  └── db\recall.db

The masthead chip lets you create more profiles + switch between them; each one gets its own sibling directory under profiles\.

To wipe a single profile: close Recall, delete that profile's folder under profiles\, restart. To wipe everything, delete the whole Recall\ install root. For a guided reset that backs up first, use the script below.

Resetting your database (no migrations yet)

Recall has no schema migrations before 1.0. When an update changes the database layout your existing data can become incompatible — and the fix is to wipe the database. Recall recreates an empty one on next launch and re-parses your screenshots folder, so your matches come back; only data that lives only in the database is lost (table below). You might also want this for a deliberately clean start or a corrupt database.

A helper script does it safely — it backs up the database first, then deletes it once you confirm. Two ways to run it:

• Already installed? Double-click %LocalAppData%\Programs\Recall\Reset-Database.bat — it ships with the app. This is the "clean install" path: no separate download needed.
• Prefer to download it? Grab recall-{version}-Reset-Database.bat from the Releases page and double-click it. It's signed + attested like every other release asset — verify it the same way (see Verifying your download).

Close Recall first. The script warns you if it's still running, backs up the database to …\db\backups\recall-<timestamp>.db, then asks before deleting. No admin rights are needed.

To restore a backup, copy the recall-<timestamp>.db trio from …\db\backups\ back over recall.db (and its -wal / -shm) while Recall is closed.

Run Reset-Database.bat /force to skip the prompt, or /nobackup to delete without a backup.

Verifying your download

Every release ships a .sha256 companion file. PowerShell can verify the download against it:

$expected = (Get-Content recall-{version}-windows-amd64-installer.exe.sha256).Split(' ')[0]
$actual   = (Get-FileHash recall-{version}-windows-amd64-installer.exe -Algorithm SHA256).Hash.ToLower()
if ($expected -eq $actual) { 'OK' } else { 'MISMATCH' }

OK means the file is intact. MISMATCH means re-download it.

For the strongest guarantee that the binary actually came from this project's CI (not a tampered mirror), install the GitHub CLI and run:

gh attestation verify recall-{version}-windows-amd64-installer.exe `
  --repo sound-barrier/recall

This walks the SLSA-provenance attestation that release.yml writes for every Windows artifact. A passing check means the binary was produced by a specific commit on main by the published GitHub Actions workflow — not just "the hash matches the .sha256 file" (which says nothing about who produced the file in the first place).

The same two checks work on the reset helper — swap in recall-{version}-Reset-Database.bat (it ships its own .sha256 and is attested alongside the installer).