You can disable OneDrive On This Day Notifications in Windows 10 if you are not happy to see them.The On This Day feature reminds you of photos and videos stored to your OneDrive from years past. It is implemented to relive old memories.
Advertisеment
OneDrive is the online document storage solution created by Microsoft which comes bundled as a free service with Windows 10. You can use it store your documents and other data online in the cloud. It also offers synchronization of stored data across all your devices.
When you have OneDrive installed and running in Windows 10, it adds a Move to OneDrive context menu command available for files under certain locations included in your user profile like Desktop, Documents, Downloads, etc. Also, OneDrive has the "Files on-demand" feature that can display placeholder versions of online files in your local OneDrive directory even if they were not synchronized and downloaded. Finally, for the files you store in the OneDrive folder you can use the file history feature.
When you have OneDrive running in Windows 10 with your Microsoft Account running, OneDrive will sync your photos and videos you store in its folder. The files will also be available under OneDrive > Photos > On this day. Eventually you will see an On This Day Notification on your Windows desktop.
This post will show you how to disable the "On this day" memories are available OneDrive notification in Windows 10.
How to Disable OneDrive On This Day Notifications in Windows 10
- Click the OneDrive icon in the system tray to open its settings.
- Now, click on the Help and Settings icon in the OneDrive flyout.
- Finally, click on the Settings entry.
- Uncheck (disable) the When "On this day" memories are available option on the Settings tab. It is enabled (checked) by default.
- Click OK to apply the change.
You are done. You can re-enable the option at any moment later to restore this functionality.
Alternatively, the notification can be disabled in the Registry. It has a corresponding option iin the HCKU branch. i.e. for the current user.
Turn off OneDrive On This Day Notifications in the Registry
- Open the Registry Editor app.
- Go to the following Registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\OneDrive\Accounts\Personal. See how to go to a Registry key with one click. - On the right, modify or create a new 32-Bit DWORD value OnThisDayPhotoNotificationDisabled. Even if you are running 64-bit Windows you must still create a 32-bit DWORD value.
- Set its value to 1 to disable "On this day" notifications.
- A value data of 0 will keep the notification enabled.
You are done.
To save your time, you can download the following ready-to-use Registry files.
The ZIP archive includes the following files.
- Disable OneDrive On This Day memories available notification.reg - this file disables the notification.
- Enable OneDrive On This Day memories available notification.reg - restores the defaults.
Extract the downloaded archive to any folder you like and double-click on the file to apply the change.
Support us
Winaero greatly relies on your support. You can help the site keep bringing you interesting and useful content and software by using these options:
If you like this article, please share it using the buttons below. It won't take a lot from you, but it will help us grow. Thanks for your support!
Advertisеment
Lately I have started receiving daily emails with photographs I took years ago. They are for memories. What an idiotic idea. If I want to look at old photos, I will go to my files and look at them. I don’t need Microsoft or some moron programmer at Microsoft to decide for me that I need to relive my life through old photographs. You people need to get a grip on reality. Stop cluttering up e-mail. It already has enough junk. Go back to making your programs functional. Get rid of the “dead wood” at Microsoft before someone comes along with a better operating system and puts you dreamers out of business.
Close, but not correct anymore. Most of current options are exactly as shown, but not the one for On This Day.
A similar one that says, “ when OneDrive suggests a new collection of my photos and videos“ is there instead.
I unchecked that several days ago, and it is still unchecked now, but the On This Day emails still come daily.
the emals originate from the onedrive website, the settings here only affect the system notifications from the desktop app, select view online to get straight to the website
Just open Onedrive in your browser. Go to settings > notifications and there is a check box under Send me an Email when: for memories. Uncheck it.
Dear Microsoft:
I find “OneDrive On This Day memories” extremely INTRUSIVE and OFFENSIVE in spite of your Disclaimer that “No human saw your photos, and no additional storage was used when this collection was created”.
I trust the functionality of “ONE DRIVE” is PRIVATE and any scanning by Microsoft and forwarding of pictures on my DRIVE compromises my TRUST & PRIVACY by MICROSOFT.
What’s further puzzling is that > 95% of the pictures, I have NO RECOLLECTION of ever taking. However, a few pictures are definitely PERSONAL and NOT TO BE exposed by MICROSOFT for Advertising “How Cool they Think they are”
One picture, I found truly disturbing and I KNOW I didn’t take it. It’s me sitting on a hospital gurney in a hospital gown before Surgery. I didn’t take it, my wife didn’t take it, the Doctor or NURSE didn’t take it…. Where did it come from?
How do I delete all these Photos from the ONE DRIVE, especially if its on MY “ONE DRIVE”? PLEASE ADVISE!
PS – When is this purged after I Die? How do you know when I Die? Do you know what impact this has on Global Warming for maintaining all this Minutia on your SERVER FARMS?
REGARDS & Disgusted with MICROSOFT!
Thanks for the post, but to help others I’ll note that things have changed since this article was written (Mar 2021). As I write in Dec 2021, with OneDrive for Windows version 21.220.1024.0005, the setting in the notifications area is no longer labelled, “When ‘On this day’ memories are available”.
Instead it’s now labelled, “When OneDrive suggests a new collection of my photos and videos”. One may wonder, “how do you know that’s not a different feature?”. First, I can confirm that when I first looked into disabling these notifications, I find the old name was not there but the new one was there, and it was checked.
When I implemented the registry change above (adding OnThisDayPhotoNotificationDisabled, which was not there, and I set it to 1), I found that on returning to the OneDrive settings UI page, this newer-named setting WAS now UNchecked. I had been reluctant to just uncheck it myself, fearing that it might be related to still other features. Time will tell if this stops the popup notifications. If it does, then it seems we can just uncheck that and don’t need the registry tweak. Hope that helps readers.
(BTW, I understand that Windows offers separate control over notifications by app. I didn’t want to turn off ALL notifications for OneDrive, again not knowing what other aspects of it may be useful to get notified about.)
Finally, as for resolving the *email* that comes from MS about “on this day” memories, which folks ask about here and elsewhere, that’s not related to this setting at all (which is only about Windows popup notifications). Instead, to control the sending of the email, the current URL to control that is:
https://onedrive.live.com/options/NotificationOptions
For me the problem isn’t notifications, it’s the NON-OPTIONAL presence of the OnThisDay feature itself. Like Joe McManus, I find them intrusive and offensive. I do keep photos of some people I don’t want to be reminded of, because they are part of my life history and I might have occasion to look at them or share them at some point, but I want to be the one who chooses if and when to see them. Even the happiest photos are a problem since I have ADHD and they can be very distracting, even if pleasurable to look at.
Is there a way to turn off OnThisDay altogether?
It makes a photo from my р0rn collection pop up sometimes just because I saved it on that day in the past. I may be using my laptop next to someone. If this isn’t true hell I don’t know what is.