Delete Search History

As you browse the Internet, everything you view is saved to the cache on your computer. Using cache helps everything load faster because data comes from your hard drive instead of a server in a different part of the world. To conserve hard drive space or keep your browsing private, you can clear or delete the history (cache).

Delete Search History on Android

If a friend asks to borrow your smartphone to search for something on the web, you probably don’t want any of your private search queries displaying in the auto-complete area when they start typing in their search terms.

There are a couple of ways to remove search items from your Google search history. The first method is quick and useful if you only want to remove a few specific terms. The second method is useful if you want to remove many of your recent search items at one time.

If you just want to clear a few specific items from your Google search history, you don’t need to log into your Google account to do so. Simply touch either the Google search box (in Portrait mode) or the Google icon on the left (in Landscape mode).

When the Google search screen displays, touch the search box. The last few items in your search history display below the search box. Hold your finger down on the search item in the list you want to delete. When the “Remove from search history” dialog box displays, touch “OK.”

If you want to clear many search items at one time from your Google search history, log in to your Google account in a browser on your Android device. Touch “Settings” in the lower-right corner of the browser window and then touch “History” on the popup menu.

On the “History” screen, all the search items you have used are listed by day. Above the list is a check box button (outlined in red below to the left of the “Remove items” button). To select all the search items on the current page, touch the check box button. Then, touch “Remove items” to remove all items on the current page.

You can also use the check boxes next to the search items (instead of the check box button at the top) to select specific items to delete. Then, touch “Remove items” to delete those items. To access older search items, touch the “Older” button above the search terms list on the right side of the browser window.

Once you’ve removed some search items on the “History” screen, a message displays telling you how many search items were removed from your history.

Delete Safari Search History on iPhone/iPad

Yes, you can clear/delete Safari’s search history on your iPhone/iPad and it’s as easy as clearing out the history. We’ve written clearing history and cookies already but this is for folks who are specifically asking: “Is there a way to clear Safari’s search history on iPhone/iPad?”

Mobile Safari’s unified search bar means you can directly search from the bar, and you even get to pick the search engine of your choice (Google, Bing or Yahoo). Siri, however, returns results from Bing whenever you ask her to search for something on the web.

Here’s how to clear Safari’s search history on your iPhone or iPad:

• Close/Quit Safari
• Open Settings
• Scroll down and tap on Safari
• Tap on Clear History

This clears up all the history including search history that’s stored up in iPhone/iPad’s Safari. If you don’t want to discreetly clear up search history on your iPad every time after you use it, there’s private mode. Private Mode does not save any history (this includes search history, websites etc.)

Post-iOS 7, it has become quite easy to go into the Private mode right from within Safari just by tapping on the Private button at the bottom-left in the tab view mode. On the iPhone or iPad, unlike the search bar in OS X Safari, your search terms are not exactly listed as a saved term. Instead, they are displayed as “search suggestions” based on what you’ve searched for in the past.

After clearing out the search history, when you type a keyword in the search bar, you might see some suggestions. These are not coming from search history; instead, these are from a feature that suggests search terms from Google/Bing/Yahoo. You can turn them on/off from Smart Search Field.

Erase Internet Explorer History

A useful keyboard shortcut for deleting your browsing history in Internet Explorer is Ctrl-Shift-Delete. If you press this combination of keys in a recent version of Explorer, you’ll bring up a dialog box that lets you specify what you want to keep and what you want to purge. Simply check the boxes next to the history you want to remove, and then click Delete. Job done.

Clear Chrome History

Chrome users have access to the same slick keyboard shortcut as Internet Explorer users. Press Ctrl-Shift-Delete in Chrome, and you’ll see Google’s options for deleting your browser history. As with IE, simply check the boxes next to the history items you want to clear, but be sure to examine the options available to you in the drop-down menu at the top. This menu allows you to specify how much of your history you’d like to delete. You can choose to excise the past hour, day, week, or month - or you can obliterate everything since the beginning of time.

Delete Browsing History on Firefox

As you browse the web, Firefox helpfully remembers lots of information for you – sites you’ve visited, files you’ve downloaded and more. All of this information is called your history. However, if you are using a public computer or share a computer with someone, you may not want others to see these kinds of things.

1. Click the menu button, choose History, and then Clear Recent History.
2. Select how much history you want to clear: Click the drop-down menu next to Time range to clear to choose how much of your history Firefox will clear.
3. Finally, click the Clear Now button. The window will close and the items you’ve selected will be cleared.

If you need to clear your history every time you use Firefox, you can set it to happen automatically on exit so you don’t forget.

1. Click the menu button New Fx Menu and choose Options.
2. Select the Privacy panel.
3. Set Firefox will: to Use custom settings for history.
4. Check the box for Clear history when Firefox closes.
5. To specify what types of history should be cleared, click the Settings… button next to Clear history when Firefox closes.
6. In the Settings for Clearing History window, check the items that you want to have cleared automatically each time you quit Firefox.
7. After selecting the history to be cleared, click OK to close the Settings for Clearing History window.
8. Close the about:preferences page. Any changes you’ve made will automatically be saved.