Safari can clear your entire browsing history, just yesterday’s, or even one single item if you know exactly where to look. This is what you can do, where you can do it, and how you can do it.
When it comes to tracking, letting Safari keep your browsing history is less about privacy-busting security and more about being useful. Safari remembers where you go when you use the forward and back buttons within a site, for example. of your history.
Safari also offers you a list of websites you regularly visit as it is so convenient to be able to get back to them with a click. It also keeps things you may not expect, such as items you’ve downloaded.
But if you don’t want that, or you’re tired of Safari going to sites you haven’t visited in years, you can delete your browsing history.
You can also wipe just the last hour’s browsing history on Mac. You can avoid them finding out that you plan to surprise them with dance lessons if you share Safari and it’s someone’s special birthday.
How can I delete the browser history in Safari?
- Choose the History menu from the menu bar in Safari
- Click on Clear History
- Choose between clearing the last hour, today, today and yesterday, or all history
- Select Clear History
Within Safari, you can press Command-Y and the current page will be replaced with a history list. Press the Clear History button at the top right.
By clicking on that, you get the same dialogue about how far back you want to clear your browsing history. However, this page does give you one extra option – deleting a single item.
Safari search history on Mac: Clear one item
Use Command-Y in Safari
Select an item from the long list by clicking once
Choose Delete from a menu after right-clicking
The Delete key removes all items in the history list if you select one, two, or more items.
Precision removal is only possible on your Mac, not on iOS. Whether it’s precision or wholesale clearing of your history, there is a way to replicate it on iOS.
If you remove it on your Mac, it will also be removed from your iPhone and iPad via iCloud.
Otherwise, you’re stuck using your iOS device. Also, you have to delete all your history.
Clearing iPhone search history
- Open your iOS settings
- Open Safari
- Click on Clear History and Website Data
- Confirm by tapping Clear History and Data
It’s important to know that you can’t selectively delete browsing history on the iPhone or iPad. You get all or nothing.