How To Delete All Searches On My Phone

The data of your search history alters the recommended ads, website cookies and more. You can find this data as piled-up cache files on your phone or PC. Over time, this data can have a negative impact on your phone, making it freeze or lag. 

So, it’s best to get rid of the search data regularly to protect your vital data as well. Now, let’s see how we can do that on many platforms. 

How to Delete All Searches on My Phone?

Here’s how to delete searches on all platforms based on most used applications as well as default browsers:

Google Chrome:

Google is one of the most used search tools. To delete search history in Google Chrome, you can follow the steps below:

1. Open Chrome on your phone.
2. Tap on the menu button.
3. Go to History.
4. Select Clear Browsing Data.
5. Select Time Range.
6. Check browsing history, cookies site data and caches images and files.
7. Tap on Clear Data.

If you do not want your search history to be stored in the future, you can also use the incognito mode.

YouTube:

If you don’t want to receive randomly suggested videos on YouTube, you can delete your search history which will also reset your video recommendations. However, since your searches on other Google applications also influence the recommendations, this may only work temporarily. 

To delete search history on YouTube, please follow the steps below:

1. Open YouTube on your phone.
2. Tap on your profile icon located on the top right corner.
3. Tap on Settings.
4. Tap on History & Privacy.
5. You can clear watch history as well as clear search history.
6. Tap on Clear Search history.
7. Select Clear search history.

Google Activity:

If you use several Google products, another option is to delete your activities across all their products. This option allows you to delete YouTube history, location history and web and app activity.

You can also manage settings from here so that your activities across the products are not saved. 

Manage Settings in Google Activity:

To manage your settings regarding web and app activity, YouTube history and Location history, please follow the steps below. 

1. Go to https://myactivity.google.com.
2. Sign in to your Gmail account if you are not already logged in.
3. Go to Web & App Activity.
4. Tap on Turn off.
5. You will receive information that this may limit or disable your personalized experience, tap on Pause to continue.
6. You will also receive an option to delete old web and app activities, to delete them , select Delete old activity.
7. Go back to Activity Control.
8. Click on location history.
9. Tap on Turn off.
10. You will receive the same notification as above. Tap on Pause to continue.
11. You will also receive an option to delete previously saved location history, to delete them, select Delete old activity.
12. Go back to Activity Control.
13. Click on YouTube History.
14. You will receive the same notification as above.  Tap on Pause to continue.
15. Tap on Turn off. 
16. You will also receive an option to delete previously saved YouTube history and activities, to delete them, select Delete old activity.

Delete History in Google Activity: 

If you are not looking to manage your settings and just want to delete your activity, follow the steps below:

1. Go to https://myactivity.google.com.
2. Sign in to your Gmail account if you are not already logged in.
3. Scroll down to Filter by date & product.
4. If you want to filter, tap on the filter, and choose your products and timeline for which you want to delete the activities.
5. Click on Apply.
6. Tap on the Delete option.
7. Confirm Delete.
8. If you do not want to filter and delete everything. 
9. Tap on the Delete option directly, located beside Filter by date & product.
10. Select your time range.
11. All your saved activities will be deleted.

Delete Searches on Other Applications:

Beyond Google and the default applications, there are also other browser applications where you might want to delete searches. 

Mozilla Firefox:

To delete searches in Mozilla Firefox, please follow the steps below. 

1. Open Mozilla Firefox on your phone.
2. Tap on the menu button located top right corner of your screen.
3. Tap on History.
4. Tap on Delete icon.

Instagram:

To delete search history on Instagram, please follow the steps below

1. Open Instagram.
2. Click on the search icon.
3. Tap on the Search bar.
4. Your recent searches will show up.
5. Click on See all.
6. Tap on Clear all.

Delete Searches on Default Browser:

Both Android and iPhones have different default search browsers. So, here’s how you can delete searches on both browsers:

Default Android Browser:

On Android, the default search browser is the internet browser. To delete search history in Internet browser, please follow the steps below:

1. Open internet browser.
2. Tap on More, located on the top right corner.
3. Go to Settings.
4. Tap on Privacy.
5. Tap on Delete Personal Data.
6. You can check: browsing history, cache, cookies and site data.
7. Select Time Range.
8. Tap on Delete.

Safari on iPhone:

Like an Internet browser, Safari is the default search browser on iPhones. To clear search history on Safari, please follow the steps below:

1. Open Safari.
2. Click on the open book icon located on the bottom.
3. Select the Time icon for History.
4. Tap on Clear.
5. Select the time range; All time, today, today and yesterday or the last hour.
6. Tap on Done.

Resetting Devices:

If you want to completely delete all the searches on your phone across all applications, resetting it could be the best option. This is especially true if you want your phone to feel completely new.

Reset Android:

To reset your Android phone, please follow the steps below. The steps might be slightly different based on your phone model:

1. Download your important files to your PC, external drive or cloud storage.
2. Go to Settings.
3. Tap on System.
4. Scroll down to Reset options.
5. Tap on Erase all data (factory reset).
6. Scroll down and tap on Reset phone.
7. Enter PIN number  and tap Continue
8. Confirm by tapping Erase Everything.

Reset iPhone: 

In iPhones, the equivalent of resetting the phone is restoring it which erases all the information and settings. To reset your iPhone, follow the steps below:

1. Tap on Settings.
2. Go to General.
3. You can either tap Reset or Erase all content and settings.
4. Enter your passcode.

Frequently Asked Questions:

How to Recover Deleted Browser History on Android ?

You can recover your deleted history in Google if you have enabled Google sync on your Android. Please follow the steps below,

1. Go to google.com
2. Login to your account if you haven’t already.
3. Tap on Data & Privacy.
4. Scroll down to Data from apps and services you use.
5. Tap on more.
6. Under Recently used Google services, you will find Google Chrome, youtube and other google products
7. Go to the google product.
8. Click on Download data
9. You will receive data on the bookmarks and your browsing history.

Can You Automatically Delete Your Searches ?

You can delete your searches in Google that are older than 3 months, 18 months and 36 months automatically. Please follow the steps below to do this,

1. Go to https://myactivity.google.com.
2. Sign in to your Gmail account if you are not already logged in.
3. Go to Web & App Activity.
4. Scroll to find Auto Delete option.
5. Tap on Choose an auto-delete option.
6. Select the number of months after which you want the searches to be deleted.
7. Click on next.
8. Click on confirm.

Why Does Google Chrome Still Show Similar Searches in the Tab After Deleting Browser History on Android ?

One of the reasons this could be happening is that your search history is still saved on your Google Account even if you deleted browser history in the Google app.

How to Disable Auto-complete Suggesting Common Questions Which Searching for Something in Google?

To disable auto-complete suggestions, please follow the steps below: 

1. Go to google.com.
2. Tap on settings located on the bottom of the page.
3. Tap on Search settings.
4. Scroll down to “Auto-complete with trending searches”
5. Tap on Do not show popular searches.
6. Click on Save.