How to Automatically Delete Chrome History after Closing

Anyone who has used their computer to do extensive web browsing knows that the data collected by your computer during those web browsing sessions is immense. If you’ve ever performed a system cleanup, you’ve most likely noticed that the browser data usually take up the most storage space.

If hard drive space is at a premium, or if you just want to avoid ten years’ worth of embarrassing keywords piling up in your web browser folder, then you can configure the browser to do a cleanup every time you shut it down.

In this article, I’m going to show you how to do that with Google Chrome. There are a lot of ways to accomplish this task using browser extensions as well as built-in Chrome options.

Delete History Automatically in Google Chrome

There used to be a large number of extensions that handled deleting your Chrome history automatically. Chrome is an easy browsing platform to develop extensions on, but the platform is also still relatively young and subject to rather sweeping architectural modifications.

Two notable extensions persevered and are now the main extensions that fulfill this need. They are Auto History Wipe and History AutoDelete. Both of them work, although they have different design philosophies and it’s likely that one or the other will suit you better.

Installing Chrome extensions is simple. By visiting the Chrome Web Store you can search and browse hundreds of add-ons that make your online experience easier. Simply clicking the “Add to Chrome” option will install the new add-on.

Once installed, a small icon will appear in the upper right-hand corner of Chrome. We’ll review two of the best extensions for auto-deleting web history.

History Autodelete

History Autodelete follows a model of allowing the user to define the domain names that should be auto-cleansed. Not many reading this article may understand why you would want certain domain names to be auto-cleansed, but rest assured, there are some valid and legitimate reasons for this.

This extension gives you the ability to not only delete upon exit but offers a few other features as well. You can set it up to delete your history after a certain number of days, say you want to keep everything over the weekend but want your browser history gone by Monday. Set up the extension to delete anything older than 3 days and you’re all set.

Auto History Wipe

Auto History Wipe behaves just as one would expect from an app with its name. It can also be configured to delete other browsing data types such as cookies, cache, etc.

One potential problem – if your current Chrome environment has you syncing data across multiple computers, then Auto History Wipe may not function correctly. This extension wipes your Chrome when you close and has no other features, so if you want one with no bells and whistles to confuse you, well, there are none.

How to Delete Your History Manually

Google Chrome does not have an auto-delete option built-in. If you want to delete your history automatically every time you exit the browser, you’ll have to install one of the extensions we’ve listed above.

If you’d like to delete the history manually you can.

The Old-Fashioned Way

Chrome’s default way isn’t all that bad, actually. It’s just the execution speed that’s the issue. However, did you know that it can help you clean other browser data as well? Here’s how:

1. Open Google Chrome if it’s not already open.
2. Click on the three dot icon and choose History.
   
3. Choose Clear Browsing Data from the left hand menu.
   
4. Click the Advanced tab.
   
5. Make sure the box is checked for everything that you want to delete, then click Clear Data.
   

Deleting Cookies on Program Exit

While this won’t delete your browsing history, it will remove the cookies every time you exit Chrome. Some people think that internet cookies are even worse than any other part of browsing data. In a nutshell, internet cookies are small pieces of data kept by your web browser for purposes such as marketing and keeping track of your browsing history.

Despite them being useful for the latter, the former makes them annoying and may make your device more vulnerable, so you might want to delete them anyway. If you think it’s worth sacrificing website load and login speeds for the sake of security, follow these steps to delete them each time you close Chrome:

In Google Chrome, click on the three dots in the top-right corner and follow these steps:

1. Click on the three dot icon and then choose Settings.
   
2. Select Privacy and Security from the left hand menu.
   
3. Choose Site Settings from the corresponding menu.
   
4. Click on Cookies and Site Data.
   
5. Toggle Clear Cookies and Site Data when you quit Chrome.
   

Now, it is worth mentioning that when you do this, Google-owned sites and searches may not clear. YouTube and your Google search history may remain due to bugs in the system.

If you’d like to ensure that these sites are cleared as well, you’ll need to add them to sites that never use cookies. Simply follow the steps above to get to the Privacy & Security settings within Chrome.

Click on Site Settings and then click on ‘Cookies & Other Side Data.’ Scroll down and add the URLs to the sites that never allow cookies.

Note: If there are sites you visit frequently, consider whitelisting them by adding them to the “Allow” list.

Remembering Things

Before you proceed to enable browsing history (if it happens to work for you, that is) or cookie deletion every time you close Google Chrome, remember that there are both pros and cons to such extensions. It’s up to you to decide.

Aside from deleting your Chrome history, you can also delete all of your Google Activity. To ensure your privacy is protected deleting your Google Activity will ensure that companies and advertisers don’t have your information.

One other tip – if it’s just one site’s contribution to your browser history that you’d like to whitewash from history, Chrome does have techniques for taking care of just one web site at a time. Rather than deleting history from your web browser, this allows you to choose select websites.