Hey Dave! I’ve been shopping for a birthday present for my husband and want to clear my browser history so he can’t see. How is that done in the new Microsoft Edge in Windows 10?
Ah yes, the last vestige of the great browser wars: the fact that we have a dozen browsers all of which work differently, interpret pages differently and offer different features. Heck, isn’t it Apple that said “think different”? Maybe this wasn’t quite what they were thinking about, though Safari is different to any other Web browser on a Mac!
We’re talking about Microsoft Windows 10, however, a completely different beast. And with Win10 Internet Explorer was finally supplanted by the quite usable Microsoft Edge browser. Nothing wrong with using that as your default browser on a Win10 system at all, even if occasionally Google sites will encourage you that you’ll be a happier person with Google Chrome. I’m skeptical that a Web browser is going to improve my life, personally, but… who knows?
Anyway, in Microsoft Edge you need to click on what I call the “shooting star” graphic on the top right of the browser. (Microsoft calls it the “Hub” button, but I think that’s pretty dull as names go). You can see it highlighted below:
Click on it and you’ll immediately see a list of recently visited sites:
You can see that I’ve been reading through some of the newest Microsoft Edge Tips from Microsoft.com. But if I didn’t want anyone else to know I’d been surfing on Microsoft.com, it’s easy to wipe this history away by clicking on the small blue link “Clear history“. So click on it and you’ll see there are a lot of different categories of information you can access and remove:
Lots to consider, but if you’re moving fast and just want to get rid of the footprints in the sand from specific site visits, I’d remove browsing history and cached data and files. If you want to more generally clean things here’s another set of options to consider, the set I use when I want to clear my own Edge browser:
Whatever combination you choose, when you’re ready click on the “Clear” button to kick things off. You’ll get a dot marquee to indicate progress:
Once it’s done, go back to History and it should be empty:
And that’s how it’s done. Now, go shop and be merry.
Oh, and don’t forget that Amazon keeps its own history and it’s own “recently viewed” info too. But you can clear that too, if you want: Clear Recent History on Amazon.
followed instructions, but at the end, I got a message “some items could not be cleared, try again”. did so with same results. What”up?
About clearing the recent history on Microsoft Edge, people should know that Microsoft keeps all your browsing history on their archives! What you suggest to do, allows only to delete the browsing history that is archived on your computer. This is said on Micosoft general conditions!
This might be worth a read, Alvaro: https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10-microsoft-edge-and-privacy