Since the Timeline activities are synced with the cloud, you can browse through your past activities and continue your work from where you left off on any other Windows PC connected to your Microsoft account. If you ever want to clear an activity or a set of activities from your Timeline, you can do so with just a few clicks. Windows lets you clear the Timeline in multiple levels, i.e., a specific activity, activities of a specific hour, and activities of a specific day.
Clear a Specific Activity from Timeline
To clear a specific activity, first open the Timeline by pressing the keyboard shortcut Win + Tab, or click on the “TaskView” icon appearing in the taskbar.
After opening Timeline, find the activity you want to clear. You can make use of the search feature on the top-right corner to do so. Once you find the activity you want to delete, right-click on it and select the “Remove” option.
You will receive a confirmation dialog box, click on the “Yes” button to clear the activity from the Timeline.
Clear Timeline for a Specific Hour
Just like you can clear a specific activity, you can also clear all activities logged on a specific hour. Like before, open Timeline with the keyboard shortcut Win + Tab. In the Timeline, find the day you want to clear the hourly Timeline activities on. Now, click on the “See All Activities” link appearing right next to the date. Note: if you can’t see the link, that means Windows logged less than ten activities for that day. As such, you cannot delete activities for a specific hour. You can only delete activities of the entire day.
In the next screen, you will see all the Timeline activities of that specific day. Find the hour you want to delete activites from, right-click on any activity under that hour and select the option “Clear all from.” In my case I’m deleting all the activities that are logged at 3 PM on July 5th.
You will see a confirmation window. Click on the “Yes” button and the activities for that specific hour will be deleted.
Clear Timeline for a Specific Day
You can also clear all the activities logged on a specific day. This option is useful when you want to bulk-delete activities. Open Timeline and find the day where you want to delete the activities. If you think the day you were looking for will be at the bottom of the Timeline, use the scroll bar appearing on the right side. It’s much faster and easier compared to using the scroll wheel. After finding the day you are looking for, right-click on any activity and select the option “Clear all from.” If you’re trying to delete the activities from Today or Yesterday, you will see the option as “Clear all from Earlier Today” and “Clear all from Yesterday.”
In the confirmation window click on the “Yes” button to delete Timeline activities of that day.
Clear Entire Timeline
Unfortunately, as of now there is no option within the Timeline to clear all the activities for last thirty days. However, you can still clear the Timeline activities by clearing the entire Activity History. Open the settings app by pressing the keyboard shortcut Win + I. Go to “Privacy -> Activity History.”
For whatever reason, you will not see the Activity History Clear button as long as you are syncing your activities to Microsoft Cloud. To see the button you need to disable syncing to MS cloud and then refresh the Settings page. Uncheck the checkbox “Let Windows synchronize my activities from this PC to the cloud.” Now, open some other tab, like “Diagnostics and Feedback,” and then go back to the “Activity History” tab. Without refreshing the Activity History page, you will not see the “Clear” button.
Under the “Clear activity history” section will see the “Clear” button. Click on it.
Click on the “OK” button in the confirmation window.
Don’t forget to select the checkbox “Let Windows synchronize my activities from this PC to the cloud” if want to re-enable syncing activities to Microsoft cloud. Otherwise, you will not be able to access your activities from other Windows PCs. Comment below sharing your thoughts and experiences regarding using the above method to delete Timeline activities in Windows 10.
