Privacy
Last updated: 2026-09-17
Recall does not collect your data. There is no account, no server, no telemetry, and nothing to opt out of.
Everything Recall knows about you — your screenshots, the text read out of them, your match history, your notes and reviews — is created on your computer and stays there. Recall has no way to send it anywhere, because no code in it uploads anything.
What stays on your machine
All of it:
- Screenshots you point Recall at. It reads them where they already are.
- Text read from them by OCR. Tesseract runs as a program on your computer. Images are never sent anywhere to be read.
- Your match history — the SQLite database Recall builds from those screenshots.
- Notes, reviews, focus items, and coaching sessions you write.
- Settings, including which folder to watch.
- Log files, written next to your data for troubleshooting.
Where these live on disk is documented in How it works → Where things live on disk. They are ordinary files. You can read, back up, or delete them without Recall's help, and uninstalling leaves them for you to remove.
What leaves your machine
Only update checks, and only when you ask for one.
When you open About Recall, which checks for updates, Recall makes plain HTTP GET requests to:
| Host | For |
|---|---|
api.github.com, github.com |
whether a newer release exists, and the hero and map lists it ships |
release-assets.githubusercontent.com |
where GitHub redirects release downloads: those lists and, only if you choose Install update, the new build, its checksum list (SHA256SUMS) and its signature (.sig) |
sound-barrier.github.io |
the hero, map and season reference lists |
These requests are downloads. They carry no request body, no query parameters about you, and no custom headers — nothing is attached that identifies you or your machine.
They are not invisible, and it would be dishonest to say otherwise. Any HTTP request tells the server it came from your IP address at a particular time. So GitHub can see that some computer at your IP asked whether a Recall release exists. That is the entire extent of it, it is the unavoidable cost of downloading a file from anywhere, and it is governed by GitHub's privacy statement.
Recall never checks on its own. After 90 days it will show a banner suggesting you check — the banner is drawn from a date stored on your machine, not from asking anyone anything.
What Recall does not do
- No analytics, telemetry, or usage statistics.
- No crash or error reporting.
- No accounts, logins, or license checks.
- No advertising, tracking, or third-party SDKs of any kind.
- No uploads. There is no code path in Recall that sends a file, an image, or a database anywhere. It only ever downloads.
Recall describes itself in its own window as "Personal Telemetry". That is a phrase about what the app is for — measuring your own play — not a description of data collection. Nothing is reported to anyone.
Sharing, when you choose to
Send to Coach and the export tools write a file to a location you pick. Recall does not transmit it. If you send that file to a coach, you send it the way you would send any other file, and you decide what to include before you do.
Reviews and coaching sessions work the same way: they are files on your computer, exchanged by you.
Behavior that looks alarming, and why it isn't
Recall does a few things that resemble what unwanted software does. They are listed here because a security scanner has flagged them, and because you deserve to know what the app is doing rather than discover it.
| What it does | Why |
|---|---|
| Watches a folder for new image files | This is the whole product: it notices a new screenshot and reads it. The folder is one you choose, and watching can be turned off. |
| Runs a hidden child process | Recall calls Tesseract, the OCR program, once per screenshot. The window is hidden so a black console box does not flash over your game. Nothing else is run. |
| Replaces its own program file when updating | That is what installing an update means. It happens only when you accept an update, and only after the update's signature from Recall's release key checks out. |
| The installer force-closes a running Recall | Windows will not let a program be overwritten while running. The installer closes it first, then upgrades. |
All of it is open source. If any claim on this page is wrong, the code that proves it is at https://github.com/sound-barrier/recall — and a report of the discrepancy is a bug we want.
Children
Recall is a tool for Overwatch players. It collects nothing from anyone, of any age.
Changes
This page is versioned in the repository, so every change to it is visible in the project's history. The date at the top is the last time it changed.
Contact
Questions, or something here that does not match what you observe: open an issue.