How do you disable Windows TimeLine

Copper Contributor

I was appalled to discover MS keeping screen shots of work from my desktop including items that would be considered insecure. Turns out they have turned on a feature called timeline. 

 

I went through the instructions to go and stop it storing locally and sending to cloud but I note the wording doesnt say - stop timeline working. 

 

I found the service to disable was The Connected User Experiences and Telemetry service. this was already disabled prior to me discovering timeline items. So what service actually runs timeline nad how do we disable this security flaw? 

 

2 Replies
You can go to Settings > Privacy & security > Activity history.

Turn Off the 'Store my activity on this device' option. Also turn Off 'Send my activity history to Microsoft' option.

If that doesn't helps, try registry method mentioned here (works in Windows 11):

https://www.kapilarya.com/how-to-disable-timeline-in-windows-10

Let us know if this helps!

Note: Included link in this reply refers to blog post by a trusted Microsoft MVP.
Hi,
Thanks for the rpely but I think you missed the gist of my post - I have already disabled it (supposedly) and the service that runs it (supposedly) and it is still running. I've added regkey but this rabbit hole gets worse.

The link you reference states : 'If you need to disable the Timeline feature ever, your best choice is to switch to local account from Microsoft account. This is because the Timeline feature is not available for local account users. Hence once you switched to local account, the Timeline feature would be disabled automatically, without any extra effort.'
I dont have an MS account on my server, I have a local one nad fight hard to keep it that way.
Despite that this security nightmare is still present after having a local account (never had MS account login), and the service being disabled.

What service actually runs this?