For reasons related to security, as well as very useful in many cases to be able to consult web pages already visited, Safari’s web browser, like many others, keeps a history of all the websites and pages you enter. This is something that can be very useful on many occasions, such as if, for example, you do not remember what the name of a certain site was, or if you want to re-read an interesting article that you have visited previously.
However, the truth is that there are other times when the browsing history of Safari can be conflicting, such as when accessing compromised pages or in those cases in which you do not want other people to see the websites where you have entered from your computer. To avoid this, Safari has its own private browsing mode, with which no browsing data is kept on the computer, but If you forgot to enable it, you should not worry, as there is the possibility of deleting the browsing history later.
This is how you can delete your Safari browsing history on any device with macOS
As we mentioned, in these cases in which the private browsing mode has arrived somewhat later than it should, there is the opportunity to completely clear (or only a period) the browsing history in Safari for Mac.
To do this, you only have to follow the next steps:
- In the menu bar at the top of Safari for Mac, select the option Record. A drop-down menu will open, and in it you must choose the option “Clear history …”.
- A new window will appear with a drop-down, where you should choose the period of time for which to delete the browsing history. You have the possibility to erase the history of a day, the last hour or even from the date of installation of macOS.
- Select the “Clear history” button to confirm the changes and delete the list of visited pages.
Once this is done, the Safari search history will be permanently deleted both on the Mac and on other devices that synchronize data through iCloud. In addition, it should be noted that With the deletion, not only will the record of visited pages be eliminated, but all of the following is included:
- History of the web pages you have visited
- List of advances and retreats in the open web pages
- List of frequently visited sites
- Recent Searches
- Web page icons
- Saved snapshots of open web pages
- List of downloaded items (downloaded files that have not been deleted)
- Websites added for fast web search
- Websites that have asked you to use your location
- Websites that have asked you to send their notifications
In this way, as you may have seen, despite not having enabled the private browsing mode in the Safari browser, the truth is that virtually all data is removed from the browser, making crawling much more difficult. However, it is important that you bear in mind that, in the rest of the devices used to reach the Internet (such as the router or the network operator’s servers), they will keep the information about the pages visited for security reasons.