Whenever you browse the internet using Safari on your Mac, Apple meticulously logs every single website you visit, every image you download, and every query you type into the search bar. This is incredibly helpful for finding a website you visited yesterday, but if you share your Mac with family members or are planning a surprise gift, you might want to wipe that digital footprint clean. Thankfully, Safari allows you to instantly destroy your entire browsing history with just a few clicks.
How to Clear Your Complete History
Safari’s built-in clearing tool wipes your recent searches, visited URLs, and saved cookies simultaneously.
- Open the Safari browser on your Mac.
- Look at the very top menu bar on your screen (next to the Apple Logo) and click on Safari.
- From the dropdown menu, select Clear History…
- A small popup window will appear with a dropdown menu asking how far back you want to delete.
- Click the dropdown menu and choose your timeframe. You can select the last hour, today, today and yesterday, or all history.
- Click the red Clear History button to confirm.
Important iCloud Warning
If you use the same Apple ID on your Mac, iPhone, and iPad, and you have Safari syncing enabled in iCloud, clearing the history on your Mac will instantly delete the history on all your other Apple devices as well. There is no way to selectively delete history on just the Mac while keeping it on the iPhone if iCloud syncing is turned on.
Furthermore, if you just want to delete a single, specific website instead of your entire day’s history, do not use the nuclear option above. Instead, click History in the top menu bar, select Show All History, locate the specific embarrassing website in the list, right-click it, and select Delete.