How to view and clear your web browsing history on Safari for iPhone and iPad

Deleting your browsing history from time to time can be a good practice if you’re particularly concerned about privacy and/or your web movements being tracked or targeted by someone. Of course, it’s also good to delete your browsing history in case you visited an, ahem, unsavoury site that you’d rather people didn’t find out about. Whatever the case, this task is easy enough to accomplish on both the iPhone and iPad.

How to clear your web history and cache on iPhone or iPad

First, make sure that you don’t have any active tabs with important data that you might need later. This applies to shopping carts on sites you haven’t signed in yet, videos, and more. Once you clear your browsing history, you won’t be able to return to where you left off on those sites.

ALSO READ: How to close all browser tabs on an iPhone

Next, open Settings and scroll down to Safari. Tap on Safari and scroll all the way down to ‘Clear History and Website Data’ and tap on it. Tap once again to confirm and Safari will purge not only all your history, but also any cookies and cached data that is stored on your device. This includes login tokens, so you will need to sign in again to all the sites you use.

If this button is greyed out, your browsing history has already been cleared or someone has enabled content and privacy restrictions on your device.

How to clear only cookies and cache on iPhone or iPad

Clearing cookies and cache is a great way to ensure that no website is tracking you while still keeping your web history for the sake of convenience.

To do this, open Settings, scroll down to Safari, tap on Advanced, then tap on Website Data. Here you’ll see a list of sites and the amount of data they’ve stored on your device. Tapping on “Remove All Website Data” will clear all saved cookies and cache. Again, if the option is greyed out, there either is no data to clear, or content restrictions have been enabled by a parent or guardian.

How to view and edit your web history on iPhone or iPad

Open Safari and tap on the Bookmarks icon at the bottom of the screen. Tap the history icon (extreme right) and you’ll now be able to view your web history sorted by time. Hitting clear will delete this history but not the cookies and cached data associated with the sites.

You can also swipe left on individual entries or on entire groups to find the delete icon. Tapping on that icon will delete that particular entry or all entries for that time period.

How to block cookies on Safari for iPhone or iPad

Lastly, you can keep your web history but limit how sites track you. This can be achieved by opening Settings, heading to Safari, opening Advanced, and toggling on the ‘Block All Cookies’ setting. This will prevent sites from storing cookies on your phone or tablet via Safari. Do note that by enabling this, your login information and any temporary cart items on shopping sites will also not be saved.

ALSO READ: iOS users now get a ‘Distraction Control’ feature to hide pop-ups, banners

Apple makes it quite simple to track and delete your web history, and even includes a tonne of controls within Safari itself to limit ad-tracking while still allowing you to browse the web conveniently.