How to Clear Your History in Popular Web Browsers

Tidy up your browser history with these tutorials

Binary data being deleted by an eraser

Jorg Greuel / Getty Images

by Scott Orgera
Scott Orgera is a former writer who covering tech since 2007. He has 25+ years experience as a programmer and QA leader, and holds several Microsoft certifications.
Updated September 29, 2019

All web browsers keep a log of pages that you have visited in the past, defined as browsing history. From time to time you may have the desire to clear your history for privacy purposes. The tutorials below detail how to clear your history in several popular browsers.

  1. Clear History in Microsoft Edge. Microsoft Edge stores a significant amount of browsing data as well as session-specific settings which dictate the browser's behavior. This data is broken down into a dozen categories, each managed via Edge's pop-out settings interface.

  2. Clear History in Internet Explorer 11. Internet Explorer 11 offers several ways to clear history, including a simple keyboard shortcut as well as through IE11's General Options section. Users are also given the ability to automatically clear history each time they close the browser. This in-depth tutorial walks you through each of these methods.

  3. How to Clear History in Other Versions of IE.

  4. Clear History in Safari for OS X and macOS Sierra. Safari for OS X and macOS Sierra allows you to clear history as well as several other private data components with just a few clicks of your mouse. Saved items are broken out into multiple groupings including browsing history and cookies. This brief how-to article describes the steps required to clear history in Safari.

  5. How to Clear History in Other Versions of Safari. Clear history in Safari for iPad

  6. Clear History in Google Chrome. Google's Chrome browser for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows provides the ability to clear some or all browsing data components from several pre-defined time intervals. This includes traditional information such as browsing history and cookies as well as some unique items like protected content licenses.

  7. How to Clear History in Other Versions of Chrome.

  8. Clear History in Mozilla Firefox. Mozilla's Firefox browser allows you to clear browsing history and other private data through its Privacy Options interface, letting you delete files from individual categories as well as cookies from select websites.

  9. Clear History in Dolphin Browser for iOS. The Dolphin browser for iOS devices lets you clear all browsing data with one tap of the finger, and also offers the option to remove only cookies, cache, passwords, and history logs one at a time.