Looked up something embarrassing? This is how you delete your Google search history
Did you look up something super embarrassing on Google and realize just too late that it was on your work phone and not in an incognito screen? That’s lame, but not insurmountable. You can still erase all the evidence. This is how you proceed.
Google recently rolled out a new feature that allows mobile users to quickly delete the last fifteen minutes of their search history. Useful, but sometimes it’s not enough. What if you saw something shocking and it took you half an hour to get out? Then there is still hope. Within the Google app, go to your profile at the top right, choose Search history (below that you will see the 15-minute option, if that helps) and then you will see ‘Delete’ on the right.
You can then choose to delete today, delete custom range, delete all activity and delete automatically. Choose for yourself what you want. It is a confrontational part, that ‘Search history’, because you actually see what your search history is. Exactly what you have typed into Google can be seen there.
Embarrassing searches
If you want to erase proof that you pretended to know perfectly well what ROFL means, while you secretly googled it on the web browser, then on the Google page on the right, go to the three dashes and from there select ‘search history’ to access same screen as in the Google app.
If you do not want anyone to ever know what you type in the search bar, you can also choose to enable automatic deletion. You can then choose how often this happens, although the choice is not very large: every 3 months, 18 months or 36 months. So if you want to quickly remove your search for that day, it is best to opt for the manual method.
Related articles
Have you recently googled crazy things that you dare to share? Leave them below in the comments.
