Windows 10 'Timeline' is extremely useful if developers support it

One of the biggest new features coming in Windows 10 Redstone 4 is a feature called Timeline. Appear last year, Timeline allows users to choice up where they left off within an app upward to 30 days in the past, congregating all the piece of work y'all exercise on your Windows 10 PC into ane convenient timeline for you to look through. Information technology works across devices too, meaning you can resume work you lot were doing on another device whenever information technology suits you.

When Timeline was first announced, I wasn't sure anybody would find the feature useful. After all, it's essentially a glorified "contempo apps" screen. Merely now I've had a few weeks to properly play with the Timeline feature, I tin can't imagine myself going dorsum to a time where Timeline didn't exist. Timeline has changed how I employ Windows to open up apps and exist productive, and this should only improve once Sets is prepare for primetime.

Hands on with Windows 10's new Timeline feature

The biggest advantage of Timeline, at least for me, is the ability to resume apps and documents across devices. I use both a Windows x desktop PC and a laptop, and existence able to resume a certificate or browsing session that yous were partaking in on i device on another is beyond useful. Of course, this scenario is just beneficial to you if you're someone who uses multiple Windows 10 devices.

Shared across devices

For example, just this past week, I was working on a Word document on my Surface Laptop, which I then awfully left as a friends house. Cheers to the magic of Timeline, nonetheless, I was able to open up Task View on my Windows 10 PC at abode, and find my Discussion document in my timeline under "Earlier today." All I had to do was click on the certificate, and information technology opened upwardly and put me exactly where I left off on my Surface Laptop. Information technology's incredible.

Now Cortana has technically had the ability to practice this for some time, merely since Cortana is simply bachelor in limited markets, and the fact that the pick upwardly where I left off feature was random and unreliable, Timeline makes the entire syncing activity across devices feature so much more accessible and like shooting fish in a barrel to apply. Information technology'due south and so nice beingness able to see a complete overview of all the tasks y'all've done over the past 30 days.

The usefulness of Timeline volition depend heavily on what apps you employ. As someone who uses Border as their default browser on all devices, along with Function, and other born Windows ten apps, Timeline is incredibly useful to me as it logs my browsing sessions and more. However, if you lot're someone who uses Google Chrome or Google Docs, and rarely uses any Microsoft software or services, Timeline is kind of useless. At to the lowest degree right now.

Developer back up will exist fundamental

3rd-political party developers are more than than welcome to build back up for Timeline into their apps and services, merely will they? My People, a feature that has been bachelor in Windows 10 officially since September final year, is even so to meet any real adoption from any large players. This casts dubiety over whether any developer will want to support Timeline also.

And that's a existent problem considering for Timeline to succeed, it needs support from developers. Timelines biggest access point is via spider web browsing, which is what is logged the most. Beingness able to open up up Timeline and leap back to a webpage you had open up a few days agone is really useful, but information technology merely works if you use Edge. And presently, Timeline will incorporate Sets, assuasive you to jump back in time and resume entire groups of apps.

If people are going to find Timeline useful, it will very likely need support from the likes of Google's Chrome, Spotify and more than. Being able to resume a playlist or track y'all were listening to last week via Timeline would be incredibly useful. Right now, still, information technology's only useful if yous're all in on the Microsoft ecosystem, which, unfortunately, about people aren't.

Timeline will be arriving with the Windows ten Redstone 4 update this Leap. Exercise you think Timeline is a feature you lot're going to use? Let u.s. know in the comments.