How to Delete Internet History and Search History from Internet Explorer, Safari, IE7, Firefox and Google Toolbar   7/18/2008 - 4,752 views,

But there are lots of other reasons to want to know how to remove the Internet history from your computer. For example, you were searching for a birthday or anniversary present for your spouse. Or thinking of taking a trip and want to surprise someone. Or maybe you don’t want your co-workers to know that you are secretly a closet Republican and were surfing conservative sites.

Whatever the reason, here is how to delete the Internet history from your computer if you are using Internet Explorer, Safari, IE7, or Firefox, and also how to clear your search history from Google Toolbar and even Google itself.

Internet Explorer

To delete Internet history from Internet Explorer: Click on the “Tools” menu, then select “Internet Options”, and click the “Clear History” button. Be sure to confirm this by clicking the “Yes” button, or your Internet history in Internet Explorer will not be cleared.

IE7

To delete the Internet history from IE7 (Internet Explorer 7): Click on the “Tools” menu, select “Internet Options”, and then under “Browsing History” select “Delete”. You will then be presented with a list of options; select the ones that you want to clear (or select “Delete All”). To clear your search history you should be sure to select “Form Data”, which will delete everything that you have typed into any form, including search forms such as at Google and Yahoo.

Safari

To clear private Internet history data in Safari, simply click on the “History” menu, and then select “Clear History”. Then click on the “Safari” menu, and hit “Clear cache”

You will note, in Safari, that under the “Safari” menu there is also a “Private Browsing” option, which allows you to proactively turn off all caching and history-saving in Safari.

Firefox

To delete your Internet history in Firefox, click on the “Tools” menu, select “Clear Private Data”, select the items you want to clear, and hit “Clear Private Data Now”

Google Toolbar and Google

The kind folks at Google explain that “you can delete your search history from the Google Toolbar or from the Google search box. Moreover, you can permanently disable your search history from being stored in the Google Toolbar or in your browser.”

They provide a step-by-step tutorial for how to do each of these things, so rather than translating, go here to learn, straight from the horse’s mouth, how to clear your search history in Google Toolbar or the Google search box.