How To Automatically Delete Browsing History in Safari

Browsing history in Safari is there to help you quickly navigate to a specific page. In addition, Safari can remember the pages you frequently visit and display them in the main window as top sites. However, there is one downside to the browsing history.

The more pages you visit, the more data gets cached in the browser. This might slow down the overall browser performance and affect your user experience. On the other hand, browsing history is easily accessible to anyone using your Mac. So you might want to set the browser to automatically delete the history after some time.

Whatever the reason, it’s pretty straightforward to do, even if you are not tech-savvy. Check out the methods below.

Deleting the Browsing History

Launch Safari and press Cmd + Comma to access “Preferences”. You can also do it by selecting Safari, then Preferences in the menu bar.

Click or tap on the “General” button and select the pop-up menu next to “Remove history items”. By default, the history automatically gets deleted after a year. You can change the settings to after a day, week, two weeks, or a month. Of course, there is also an option to do it manually.

How to Manually Remove Safari History

Select “History” from the menu bar and click on “Clear history” at the bottom of the drop-down window. A pop-up window appears in Safari, and again, you get to choose the time frame – last hour, today, today and yesterday, or all history. Once you make the selection hit “Clear History” to confirm.

Safari Preferences Tips and Tricks

Aside from automatic history removal, you can customize the new window’s behavior and change the homepage. To change the homepage, click on the bar and insert a link http://www.techjunkie.com/, for example. Then confirm by tapping/clicking on “Set to Current Page”.

By default, the files you download go to the Downloads folder, but you can change it to any destination of your liking. The downloaded files are automatically removed after day, but you can also change it to “manually”, “after quitting”, or “upon successful download”.

The “Tabs” button reveals a menu with a few options to tweak Safari tab performance. There are also a few useful shortcuts that can make your browsing experience faster. If you want to block all cookies, click or tap the “Privacy” button and check the box next to Cookies and website data.

Can You Do It on Your iPhone?

Sure you can, and the same method applies for your iPad and iPod Touch. That said, iOS on mobile devices doesn’t feature automatic scheduling and there is no option to select the time frame. In other words, you need to do it manually and the action deletes all the history and website data.

Tap on the Settings app, swipe up and select Safari. Once inside the Safari menu, navigate to “Clear History and Website data” and tap on it.

Tap “Clear History and Data” in the pop-up window to confirm and you’re good to go.

Note: Deleting Safari history via a mobile device affects all other devices signed into the same iCloud account. On the other hand, this action doesn’t affect the AutoFill data, so you’ll be able to easily log into websites you frequently use.

Can You Automatically Delete History in Chrome?

Unfortunately, there is still no way to automatically remove browsing history and cache in Chrome. However, you can delete cookies automatically. Take the following path to access the option:

Chrome > Settings > Advanced > Content settings (under Privacy and Security) > Cookies

Toggle on the button next to “Keep local data only until you quit your browser”. If you are really annoyed by cookies, you can also toggle the button next to “Block third-party cookies”.

How to Delete History in Chrome

To access your browsing history, press “Cmd + Y” on your keyboard and select the “Clear browsing data” option. The pop-up window allows you to select the time frame and type of data. It’s advisable to keep Passwords, Autofill, Hosted apps, and Media licenses unchecked.

Once you are done with the selection, click/ tap the “Clear Browsing Data” button to confirm This process is very similar on your iPhone.

Launch Chrome and tap the three dots to access the “More” menu. Select “History” and tap “Clear Browsing Data” at the bottom of the window. You can choose the type of data to delete – tapping on “Edit” allows you to pick the websites you want to delete or keep.

Unleash the Cookie Monster

By now, you know how easy it is to set automatic history removal in Safari on your Mac or PC. The automatic removal is not possible on your iPhone/iPad. However, it shouldn’t take you more than 10 seconds to reach the “Clear History and Website Data” section.

Whichever method you prefer, it’s advisable to get rid of the browsing history at least once a week to make sure your browser run smoothly.