How To Fix Windows 10 Timeline Not Showing Any Items

by John Kuefler • May 2, 2018

The Windows 10 April update offers several new productivity features, the most notable of which is the new timeline. The timeline allows you to view and resume previous activities, both from the computer you are on and from other devices. For heavy users of Visual Studio and MS Office products on multiple devices, this could be a big productivity aid.

Unfortunately, some users are having trouble with the timeline. After ensuring timeline is turned on in settings, it may not be showing activities, even several days after getting the update.

One possible remedy to this may be ensuring that the following three registry keys under Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System are set:

In my case, these keys were not present at all and I had to create them. All 3 keys should be set to 1.

Typically after setting registry keys, a reboot is needed to make them take effect. However, a cold boot (fully shutting down the machine, then pressing the power button to start it back up) seemed to be the only thing that worked after several warm reboots. I observed this behavior on two different machines.

Once the machine is cold started, after a few minutes you should see your history appearing in the timeline:

While this may not be the solution to everyone’s timeline issues, hopefully it helps some!