How to Clear Fire Stick Viewing History

Steve Larner February 28, 2021

If you share your Fire Stick with friends or family, there’s a good chance that at some point, they’ll watch something that just doesn’t appeal to you. Other times, you open a movie or TV show and end up not liking it.

While this in itself isn’t much of an issue, it can skew the “What to watch next” Amazon recommendations and the recent list on your Fire Stick. This article provides instructions on how to clear your Firestick history to ensure that you don’t have to wade through Peppa Pig to get to The Mandalorian.

Your Fire Stick’s history will show your most recently viewed apps whereas your Prime Video history and other streaming apps will show your most recently watched content. For the purposes of this article, we’ll review your options for clearing recently watched history.

Can You Remove Recently Watched Apps on Firestick?

First and foremost, you may want to hide the apps that your Fire Stick shows you’ve watched most recently. These apps appear near the top of your Fire Stick homepage. Unfortunately, the only way to remove this history is to completely uninstall the app.

Even though it’s a bit extreme, you can remove the apps by doing this:

Use your Fire TV remote to click on ‘Settings’ at the top of your Fire Stick home page.
Click on ‘Applications.’
Click on ‘Managed Applications’
Click on the app you’d like to remove from your Fire Stick and click ‘Uninstall.’
Confirm the process in the pop-up window that appears.

Now the application will be removed from your Fire Stick and from your recent apps’ history.

How to Remove Items from Your Recently Watched List

Unfortunately, removing your viewing history from your Fire TV Stick isn’t quite as simple as deleting your browser history. Amazon uses everything that you’ve viewed to provide you with suggestions on what to watch next. Therefore, it’s in their best interest to maintain a list of what you’ve watched to try and persuade you to rent or buy something related.

There appears to be no way to truly delete viewing history on a Fire Stick from a Fire Stick. Other websites recommend opening the history, selecting the TV show or movie, and choosing the “Remove from recently watched” option. That does work, but only for a brief moment. When you return to the home screen, you’ll see it back in the recently watched carousel. So, how do you delete viewing history on a Fire Stick? Here are the details.

Before starting, make sure that you’ve got your Fire Stick plugged into your TV, that the TV is switched on, and that your Fire Stick is connected to your Wi-Fi network correctly.

Remove Watched History from Your Amazon Account using a Browser

The Fire Stick is tied to your Amazon account, meaning that your history gets pulled up from within the account. That is perhaps the reason you cannot erase watched history in your Fire Stick successfully. Here’s what you do.

Open a browser a log into your amazon account.
Click on “Accounts and Lists” at the top right area of the page, then select “Your Watchlist.”
Click the gear icon at the top right. then click on “Settings.”
You may get a prompt to log in again. Click “Activity.”
Select “View Watch History.”
Click “Videos you’ve watched.” then select the movies and shows you want to remove and choose “Remove them from your watched videos.” One-by-one deletion is the only option.

The above steps should delete the chosen videos from your viewed list on your Fire Stick. After completing the deletions through your Amazon account, you may also try resetting your Fire Stick or deleting the viewed content stored in the Fire Stick. Regardless, completing the above steps won’t remove any purchased content from your Video Library (no method will), so you’ll still be able to watch anything you’ve paid for already.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I delete everything from my Fire Stick?

Perhaps you want to refresh your Fire Stick. This means deleting all history, apps, and titles. You could perform a full factory reset but when you sign back into your Amazon account the previous history, apps, and recommendations may reload.

To factory reset your Fire Stick hold the back button on the right side of the directional pad together for ten seconds. In the pop-up that appears select ‘Factory Reset.’

You can also de-register your Amazon Fire Stick from the Amazon Account page. Simply click on ‘Content and Devices’ from the Account dropdown on the Amazon home page (in the upper right-hand corner. Then, select ‘Devices’ from the top of the new page that appears. Click on the Fire Stick you’d like to de-register, then click on the device name (it’s a hyperlink). On the right, you’ll see two options: ‘Deregister’ and ‘Delete Voice Recordings.’ Select ‘Deregister’ and follow the prompts. This will remove all of your Amazon account information from the Fire Stick.