If you share a computer with others in your household, keeping a surprise vacation or gift a secret can be challenging. Saved searches, in particular, can rat you out.
After all, if your web browser defaults to Expedia every time someone types in an “E,” your plans will be found out. Are you traveling soon? Tap or click here for some travel safety tips. Plus, saved searches eat up memory on your hard drive.
So how do you go about clearing your search history? Did you know you can do this for your browser and favorite social media sites? We’ll tell you how.
Facebook
Facebook likes to keep tabs on you, including your search history. It does this to show targeted ads. To keep some semblance of privacy on the site and app, follow the steps below to clear your Facebook search history on your computer:
- Go to Facebook.com and log in.
- Tap your profile in the upper right corner.
- Select Settings & Privacy > Activity Log.
- Click the Logged Actions and Other Activity option.
- Select Search History.
- You’ll now see a list of every search you’ve made on Facebook up until this point. To delete this history, choose Clear Searches.
- If you’d like to delete single search history items instead of your entire history at once, click on the three dots to the right of each search in the history list and tap Delete. A menu will appear to confirm. Hit Delete again. That will remove just that one search.
Twitter
Twitter also keeps track of your search history. This can help you find profiles you look for often, or it can be annoying and reveal information you don’t want others to know.
To delete your Twitter search history:
- On a web browser, log in to your Twitter profile.
- Click on the Search Twitter bar in the top right corner of the screen. A list of your recent searches will appear.
- Tap the X next to individual searches to delete them one at a time.
- To clear all your searches at once, click Clear all at the top of the menu. Tap Clear on the menu that pops up and all searches are erased.
To clear your mobile Twitter search history:
- Log in to the Twitter app on your smartphone or tablet and tap the Search tab at the bottom of the screen. It’s the tab with the magnifying glass icon.
- Tap the Search Twitter bar at the top to bring up your recent searches.
- Tap the X in the circle to the right of Recent searches and tap Clear to clear all of your recent searches.
- To delete individual searches, swipe left on a search from the list and tap Delete.
- You can delete term searches but won’t be able to delete recent profiles you’ve searched without clearing your entire search history.
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