How to Clear Your Browsing History

How to Clear Your Browser History

Internet Explorer

Microsoft Windows users running Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 and 7 can delete their history files by clicking on the “Tools” menu located at the far right side of the browser tab bar and scrolling down and clicking on “Delete Browsing History.” Users may then click the "Delete files" button or the "Delete All" button located at the bottom of the dialogue box.

Users also have the option of automatically deleting files each time they close the browser window by clicking the “Advanced” tab and checking the “Empty Temporary Internet Files folder when browser is closed” under the “Security” section.

Users running Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 can delete their history files by clicking on the “Safety” menu located on the far right side of the browser tab bar. When the drop down menu appears, select the “Delete Browsing History” option. When the “Delete Browsing History” dialogue box opens, place check marks next to all of the options you wish to be deleted. Press the “Delete” button at the bottom of the dialogue box.

Firefox

At the top of the Firefox window, click on the “Tools” menu, and select “Clear Recent History.” Click the drop down menu next to “Time range to clear” to choose how much of your history Firefox will delete. You can clear history collected in the last hour, two hours, four hours, one day, or going all the way back to when Firefox was first installed. Below the “Time range to clear” drop down menu are options for which items of history you would like Firefox to clear. Check next to each of the items you would like deleted. Click on the “Clear Now” button to delete your browsing history.

Safari

Click on the “History” menu button. To clear browsing history completely, click on “Clear History” at the bottom of the drop down menu. If you were successful in clearing your browser history, the “Clear History” button should appear grayed out. If you only wish to delete recent browsing history, the last ten websites visited will be visible in the middle of the drop down menu. All of the websites from earlier in the day and earlier in the week are available below the ten most recent website visited. These can be deleted individually.

Opera

To erase browsing history in Opera open the “Tools” menu and select “Delete Private Data.” Click the “Details” button and select “Clear history of visited pages”. Click the “Delete” button. You may also want to delete the history of typed-in addresses. To do so, open the “Tools” menu and select “Delete Private Data.” Click the “Details” button and select “Clear history of typed-in addresses”. Click the delete button.

Google Chrome

Click on the “Tools” menu. Select “Options”. Click the “Under the Hood” tab. Click “Clear browsing data”. Select the "Clear browsing history" checkbox. Use the "Clear data from this period" menu to select the amount of data you want to delete. Select “Everything” to clear your entire browsing history completely. Click “Clear browsing data.”