Windows 10: Windows Timeline - Can I prevent Tracking Activity From Specific Apps?

On occasion I want to go back and find something I was doing earlier in the day or a day or two ago. The timeline is really handy for that. However, it also gets filled up with a bunch of stuff that is useless to me. For example, every time I grab a screenshot with my SnagIt app, it gets logged, every time I watch a video clip with VLC, this also gets logged.

I was just curious whether there is any way to prevent activity from specific apps of my choosing to NOT be logged just to keep the excess content to a minimum. I've tried researching this and found nothing, but as a last attempt thought that I would try here to see if anyone knows of a way to do this.

:)

 

Timeline Activity not showing up

The timeline activity just won't show up on the timeline window. I always get "Use your PC more for activities."

I have enabled the settings required for timeline in Privacy > Activity History:

Let Windows collect my activities

Let Windows Sync my activities

Show activities from accounts

I also tried using regedit to add these variables in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System

• EnableActivityFeed
• PublishUserActivities
• UploadUserActivities

All the variables are set to 1, and are DWORD values. (as stated in this article Timeline feature not working in Windows 10), to no effect.

Any more troubleshooting steps I can go through?

 

Windows 10 Timeline: no 'see all activities' option in timeline...

Hi Andrew,

If you're already logged in with your Microsoft account and still don't have the option to see all activities on each date, then it's possible that the activities on your account has been hidden from your Timeline. To verify this, please check if
Show activities from accounts option has been turned off. If it is, then follow these steps to turn it on:

1. Open Settings > Privacy > Activity history.
2. Under Activity history, check the box for Let Windows collect my activities from this PC.
3. Under Show activities from accounts, make sure to toggle it
   on for your account.

Let me know how it goes.

Regards.

 

Microsoft Photos on my Windows 10 PC. How can I delete photos from the timeline?

Hi,

Thank you for writing to Microsoft Community Forums.

Based on the description, I understand that you want to remove photos that are displayed on the timeline. To remove the photos from the timeline you can follow the steps mentioned:

1. Open Photos app.
   
2. Click on the Ellipsis on the top right corner.
   
3. Click on Settings.
   
4. Under Sources click on X to remove the folder, which has the photos that you want to remove from Timeline.
   

Regarding the phone issue, I suggest you to follow the troubleshooting steps from the article

Fix problems with apps from Microsoft Store.

I understand that you are looking for the feature that detects the duplicate photos in Microsoft Photos app.


I would encourage you to provide your valuable feedback in Feedback hub so that our development team can review your suggestions. To provide your feedback, please refer to the article

Send feedback to Microsoft with the Feedback Hub app.

You can also check in Microsoft Store, which has a variety of useful apps and tools that might be helpful.

Please reply to this post for further assistance, we will be glad to help you.

Nikhar Khare

Microsoft Community - Moderator