YouTube tracks everything you do on the platform. Whether you mainly use YouTube on your smartphone or your computer, your activity is automatically recorded and saved. This information, in case you were wondering, is what they rely heavily on for future video recommendations. Let’s see how to delete your YouTube history and how to disable YouTube history completely if you want.
THE SHORT ANSWER
To clear your search and watch history on YouTube, go to your Google My Activity page for YouTube. Click on the REMOVE button on the right above your entire watch and search history. Decide how long you want to delete that history and then click that option to clear that history.
IMPORTANT SECTIONS
There are two types of history when it comes to YouTube: search history and viewing history. YouTube keeps track of both and can use them to recommend future videos and place relevant ads.
Clearing your search and watch history is a little more complicated than clicking the search bar and deleting suggestions. Let’s see how to clear your history.
How to Clear Your YouTube History (Android and iOS)
How to clear YouTube search history
Open the YouTube mobile app and tap your profile icon in the top right corner. Select in the next menu Settingsthen History & Privacy.
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Select in History & Privacy Delete search history. You get one last warning; to continue and clear your entire YouTube search history for your account, press DELETE SEARCH HISTORY.
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How to clear YouTube watch history
Open the YouTube mobile app and tap your profile icon in the top right corner. Select in the next menu Settingsthen History & Privacy.
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Select in History & Privacy Clear watch history. You get one last warning; to continue and clear your account’s entire YouTube watch history, tap CLEAR WATCH HISTORY.
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Clear your YouTube history (desktop)
Clearing your search history explained
Unfortunately, the hard truth is that you can’t only clear your YouTube search history – at least all at once – on your desktop.
If you want to clear all your YouTube searches from a certain time frame, it’s a package deal. You should also delete your entire watch history from that same period. If you’re still confused, let’s see what we mean.
To get started, go to YouTube in a browser on your computer. Click on your profile icon in the top right corner.
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Select in the next menu Your data on YouTube.
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Scroll down the Your Data page on YouTube until you see the section marked YouTube search history below YouTube Controls. Click on the Manage your YouTube search history knob.
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This will take you to your Google My Activity YouTube history page. There are many other ways to get to this more general page, but this one contains all of your YouTube watch and search history.
If you want to keep your watch history intact, you must delete and delete each search individually from your history. If you don’t and would rather delete all your watch and search history at once, click the REMOVE button above your YouTube history.
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From the drop-down menu, select the range regarding how much of your YouTube history you want to delete. To delete the entire YouTube watch and search history from your account, click Always delete. Click Delete today if you just want to delete that day’s watch and search history. If you have a specific time frame for searches and watches you want to delete, click Delete custom range.
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Clear your watch history
Click on the Menu () button in the top left corner of the YouTube homepage.
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Your watch history will appear on the left. Click on the CLEAR ALL WATCH HISTORY button on the right.
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You get one last warning. Click CLEAR WATCH HISTORY in the pop-out box to finish deleting your YouTube watch history.
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Turn off YouTube search and watch history
Pause YouTube history (desktop)
Go to YouTube in a browser on your computer. Click on your profile icon in the top right corner.
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Select in the next menu Your data on YouTube.
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Scroll down to YouTube Controls. Under YouTube watch history or YouTube search history, click the button that says on.
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This will take you to the . from your Google account Activity buttons for YouTube history. Click Turn off. In addition, you can uncheck the box: Add the YouTube videos you watch and Add your YouTube searches below Sub-settings to make it so that watch and search data is not included as a subset of things that YouTube monitors.
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In the Pause YouTube history box, click on the Pause button at the bottom. This will prevent YouTube History from checking your search and watch history until you turn the option back on.
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Pause YouTube History (Android and iOS)
Open the YouTube mobile app and tap your profile icon in the top right corner. Select in the next menu Settingsthen History & Privacy.
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Turn on History & Privacy. in Pause Watch History and/or Pause search history options.
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That’s all you need to know about deleting your YouTube history. Also check out our guide to: find your YouTube comments if you also want to quickly clean up that part of your digital footprint.