Turn off activity history for the whole PC — via Microsoft Learn

The easy way

1. Just for your account: Settings → Privacy & security → Activity history → turn off Store my activity history on this device, and use Clear history to remove what's already stored.

Group Policy

Open gpedit.msc (Pro, Enterprise and Education only) and go to:

Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > OS Policies > Enables Activity Feed, Allow publishing of User Activities and Allow upload of User Activities (all Disabled)

Registry equivalent

Double-click a .reg file and confirm to merge it. Right-click → Edit first if you want to read it, which is always a good idea with any .reg file from the internet.

Apply

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

; Oddbyte.Me: Turn off activity history for the whole PC

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System]
"EnableActivityFeed"=dword:00000000
"PublishUserActivities"=dword:00000000
"UploadUserActivities"=dword:00000000

Undo

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

; Oddbyte.Me: undo Turn off activity history for the whole PC

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System]
"EnableActivityFeed"=-
"PublishUserActivities"=-
"UploadUserActivities"=-

Same thing from a command prompt

Run in an administrator Command Prompt or Terminal.

reg add "HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System" /v "EnableActivityFeed" /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
reg add "HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System" /v "PublishUserActivities" /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
reg add "HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System" /v "UploadUserActivities" /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

Undo:

reg delete "HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System" /v "EnableActivityFeed" /f
reg delete "HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System" /v "PublishUserActivities" /f
reg delete "HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System" /v "UploadUserActivities" /f

Microsoft says these policies take effect immediately. They don't delete activities already stored on the PC; use Clear history for that. Sending activity history to Microsoft has been retired on Windows 11 22H2 and later (since the January 2024 update), so on current builds history is only stored locally; the upload policy matters mainly for older versions.