Monitoring data does not have to be kept forever, and in many places it should not be. Retention is set in Settings → Monitoring & Privacy.
Two separate periods
- Screenshot retention: from one week up to a year, or indefinitely. One month is a common default.
- Activity retention: the per-minute activity and app records. From one month up to two years, or indefinitely. Six months is a common default.
They are separate because they weigh differently. Screenshots are the sensitive, storage-hungry part, while activity data is small and more often needed for a historical comparison.
What is never deleted by retention
Your time logs. Hours, projects, tasks and the totals on every report and invoice stay regardless of these settings. Retention removes the supporting monitoring detail, not the record of work done.
So a year later you can still prove a client was billed for forty hours in March. You may no longer have the screenshots from those hours.
Choosing a period
- Keep screenshots only as long as you would realistically look at them. For most organizations that is weeks, not years.
- Check your own obligations. Some contracts and some jurisdictions require a minimum, while privacy law elsewhere pushes the other way.
- Storage counts towards your plan. Shortening screenshot retention is the quickest way to free space without upgrading.
Deletion is permanent
Once a screenshot passes its retention period it is gone. Not archived, not recoverable. Shorten the period carefully, because the data outside the new window will not come back.
Tell people what you chose
"Screenshots every ten minutes, blurred, kept for thirty days" is a sentence that answers almost every question a team member has. Put it somewhere they can find it.