Timeline

Arguably the biggest feature new feature for Windows 10 is one aimed squarely at productivity. Timeline is part of the Task view feature that was previously in Windows 10, and accessed in the same way, either by clicking the icon on the task bar, or pressing Win + Tab. The idea of Timeline is to make it very easy to get back into a task you were doing previously or find some information you know you had open in a browser.

Sorry for the poor screenshot but Timeline isn't working for me

By default, Timeline is only set to go back a single day, and apps will be sorted by hour. You can optionally enable it to go back 30 days as well, which seems like a more useful method to have as the default.

You can also adjust how Timeline works in the Privacy settings. When enabled, Timeline will sync activities from this PC, and also sync them to the cloud, so you can access documents and information across devices. But if you’d rather not have that data collected, you can disable the cloud sync, the local PC activity collection, or both.

Focus Assist

Another feature added with the April Update which focuses on keeping you focused is Focus Assist. After clamoring for notifications on the PC after seeing their benefit in mobile, it quickly became apparent that, while useful, notifications can also be a distraction.

In previous versions of Windows 10, Microsoft offers a Quiet Hours feature where you could set the PC to not provide notifications depending on the time, but with Focus Assist, that ability is expanded upon.

In addition to being able to schedule a time when notifications are muted, you can now change what level of notifications come through, with a custom priority list. You could in theory mute all notifications except those you want to see, which sounds fairly useful, or you could just set a time where you want to get some work done and only have alarms appear.

There’s also additional new automatic rules for notification action when duplicating a display, which will be very beneficial to avoid embarrassing notifications when using a projector, as well as when gaming.

Enabled by default is also a summary of notifications that were missed while focus assist was on, so if you were gaming, you’ll get a handy summary of everything that happened while you were having some fun, so you can get back to work.

This is of course still coupled with the notification settings where you can enable or disable notifications per-app.

Focus Assist is the kind of feature that Windows 10 needs. Notifications are great, but they can be distracting when you’re trying to get some work done. It would be great if Microsoft added some more settings here to allow you to create more automatic rules, such as when you have an app open, or additional time slots rather than just the single time you can enable it now.

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  • ChristopherFortineux - Friday, June 8, 2018 - link

    It is the same capacity.....
  • ivanfreyes - Friday, May 25, 2018 - link

    How do you undo the update? Please reply at your earliest convenience.
  • ಬುಲ್ವಿಂಕಲ್ ಜೆ ಮೂಸ್ - Saturday, May 26, 2018 - link

    "How do you undo the update?"
    -----------------------------------------
    I boot to Acronis and restore whichever backup I like

    How do you do it?
  • BurntMyBacon - Tuesday, May 29, 2018 - link

    With clonezilla. Not as nice to look at as Acronis, but it works well and is free.
  • piiman - Saturday, May 26, 2018 - link

    Go to Updates and select recovery. Also my system actually made a duel boot entry that said roll back update
  • Jburris020 - Friday, May 25, 2018 - link

    I'm still attempting to fix my computer as everytime I try a restore or a rollback it fails. The update worked on my surface pro 4 but not my Asus rog...
  • ಬುಲ್ವಿಂಕಲ್ ಜೆ ಮೂಸ್ - Saturday, May 26, 2018 - link

    Acronis Backup works every time (once you learn how to use it)
  • BurntMyBacon - Tuesday, May 29, 2018 - link

    In my somewhat substantial experience, roll back has failed at least three times as often as it has worked. It may be that others roll back to fix things that I fix without rolling back, but a <20% success rate doesn't seem very useful to me. I typically recommend making a manual backup image to any client that is willing. Acronis works well and is easy to use.
  • piiman - Saturday, May 26, 2018 - link

    Time to reinstall!
  • kidsafe - Saturday, May 26, 2018 - link

    This is definitely the buggiest update I've installed in a while. I suffered from the File Explorer hang. It makes every other process timeout as well. Rolled back after two days trying various supposed fixes.

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