Almost everything you do in Windows is tracked and saved for various reasons. Here is how to view your activity history in Windows 10 and 11.
Windows 10 and 11 have an Activity History feature that keeps track of several things you do in the operating system. This tracking includes but is not limited to app and service launches, file opening, searches, browsing activity, and more.
By default, all the activity history is stored locally. The activity history is synced with your Microsoft account depending on the system’s privacy permissions. As you can guess, once synced with your Microsoft account, the activity history is stored locally and on Microsoft servers.
Microsoft uses your activity history to improve suggestions, recommendations, and performance of specific apps and services. According to Microsoft, the data is also used to better serve Windows and other MS products to its users.
One time or another, you might want to see what kind of data Microsoft is collecting in the name of Activity History. The good thing is that it is pretty easy to view your activity history in Windows. In fact, Microsoft even categories the data so that you can see the activity history in an organized manner.
So, without further ado, let me show you how to view activity history in Windows 10 and 11 operating systems.
The steps below work the same in Windows 10 and 11.
View Activity History in Windows 10 & 11
You must log in to your Microsoft account privacy dashboard to view the activity history. For whatever reason, you cannot see it directly in Windows 10 or 11 as of writing this. The good thing is that viewing activity history from the privacy dashboard is pretty straightforward. Let me show you how to do it.
First, we need to go to the Microsoft Account Privacy dashboard. For that, follow the below link. Since you are visiting a sensitive page, you might be prompted to sign in. Log into your Microsoft account to continue.
https://account.microsoft.com/privacy
After logging in, you will see a section called “Manage your activity data.” This section neatly organizes and shows all the collected activity history data in various categories. They are as follows:
- Location Activity – This section shows your geographical location activity if you have given location access permission to Windows.
- Browsing History – This section shows your browsing history activity in the Microsoft Edge browser. If you are daily driving some other browser, like Chrome, you don’t have to worry about it.
- Search History – Shows your Bing search history.
- App and Service Activity – Data regarding all the apps and services you use on Windows.
- Media Activity – This section contains all the data regarding movies, TV, and music you watch in specific first-party apps like Movies & TV, Media Player, etc.
- App and Service Performance Data – This section contains app and service reliability and performance data.
You can go through each section to see what data Microsoft has collected based on your activity history.
If necessary, you can delete activity history from the same page. If you want exact steps on how to do it, follow the linked guide.
That is all. It is that simple to view activity history in Windows 10 and 11 operating systems.
I hope this simple and easy Windows how-to guide helped you.
If you are stuck or need some help, send an email, and I will try to help as much as possible.
