Can I remove Windows 10 Timeline's nudge to "see more days in timeline"

Question

For users who haven't signed in with a Microsoft account and given Microsoft access to their computer activity, the Windows 10 task view contains a message right below the currently open applications:

Naturally, because this is Windows 10, there's no way to dismiss this nudge except by giving up and letting Microsoft harvest your computer activity for fun and profit. This irritates me immensely.

My question is, can any of you lovely individuals help me make this go away? Is there a registry edit I can make? It's hard to just avoid task view, as I have a 2-in-1 laptop and task view is the easiest way to switch windows in tablet mode, as well as the only way I know to manage multiple desktops.

Answer 1

On Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise, or Education, you can use Group Policy to disable the option to upload activity, and this seems to dismiss the nudge. Here are the steps:

• Click Start, search for gpedit, and click the top result Group Policy Editor
• Browse to the path Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\OS Policies
• Double-click the Allow upload of User Activities policy
• In the pop-up window, select the Disabled option, then click Apply and OK

The nudge in Task View should then no longer appear.

I found this as part of the instructions in https://pureinfotech.com/disable-timeline-windows-10/.

Answer 2

Following on lincb's answer, you can set the registry key corresponding to that group policy at:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System]
"UploadUserActivities"=dword:00000000

That is, at that path in the registry, add the 32-bit DWORD

UploadUserActivities

and set its value to 0.

Answer 3

If you don't care to have the Timeline at all, you can disable this message and the timeline together by unchecking Store my activity history on this device in the Activity History settings. (Search for Activity history privacy settings in the start menu)