Located in the taskbar, the new Timeline icon displays a detailed history of your activity and allows you to resume a task in progress.
It had been announced for the Fall Creators Update, but Microsoft had not had time to make it. This time for sure, Timeline will be in the Spring Creators Update (Redstone 4), scheduled for April. What is Timeline? It’s a history of your activity that allows you to pick up where you left off. For example, if you visited a website a week ago with the Edge browser, but you can’t remember which one, you can find it in Timeline and continue browsing that site.
Timeline does not support multiple versions of files
In contrast, Timeline is different from Apple’s Time Machine. Indeed, this function of macOS performs incremental backups of your files, which makes it possible to recover old versions. We did the test by creating a drawing with Paint and then modifying it two days later. If we try to access the initial drawing through Timeline, the new drawing is displayed. Timeline is therefore more of a historical vocation. It can, however, affect all devices attached to the same Microsoft account, which makes this function particularly powerful. For now, Microsoft says it works with Edge, Office, as well as new versions of the Maps, News, Money, Sports and Weather apps. Others should follow.
How to activate Timeline
We tested Timeline on a preview version of the Spring Creators Update, intended for Insiders. Microsoft is therefore likely to change elements in the final version in April. Timeline is normally enabled by default. If not, go to Windows 10 settings and click Confidentiality, then on Activity history in the left column.
You then have two switches to enable the activation of Timeline on the PC, but also more generally on your Microsoft account. At the bottom of the window, a button allows you to completely erase the activity history.
How to use Timeline
To launch Timeline, all you have to do is click on the small icon to the right of the search box in the taskbar.
The activity history is then displayed with, at the top, thumbnails corresponding to the currently open applications. You can close windows from this view by clicking the X in the title bar.
On the right, a vertical cursor allows you to browse the history by date. You also have a search box at the top right to quickly find an item. Once the item is found, click on its thumbnail to access it.
If you have had a lot of activity for a given date, Timeline only shows the main ones. Click on the mention See all activities to display them in their entirety.
If the number of thumbnails is very high over a day, Timeline will then offer you one display per hour.
How to edit Timeline
If you want to delete an activity, right click on the thumbnail and choose To delete in the context menu.
The thumbnail will then be deleted from the history.