If you’re unhappy with YouTube’s recommendations or want to wipe your YouTube history clean, clearing your data is the way to go. However, this only removes the data on your Google account. If you want to clean your data stored on Google’s servers, you’lldelete your Google account and data.
We show you how to clear your YouTube history on all supported platforms, includingall our favorite Chromebooks. Remember that clearing your YouTube history on one device also removes it on all devices signed in with the same account.
How to clear your YouTube history
YouTube tracks your history in two ways: search history and watch history. Search history shows up when you enter text in YouTube’s search bar, while watch history lists the videos you watched and when. We recommend deleting both to ensure your history is fully cleared.
The YouTube app won’t let you clear their search history and watch history in bulk separately. If you want to remove one of these in bulk, skip to the section on clearing your history on desktop.
Your watch and search histories are associated with your YouTube account, not your device. If you use multiple Google accounts, you must delete your YouTube history for each account.
How to delete your YouTube history on Android and iOS
We use the Android app to demonstrate the steps. These steps also work on the iPhone and iPad apps.
How to clear your YouTube watch history and search history on the mobile app
How to delete specific searches on the YouTube app for Android and iOS
Rather than going through the above steps, you can clear recent searches in a couple of taps.
How to pause your YouTube search and watch history on Android and iOS
While clearing your YouTube history occasionally will serve you well, you can pause your watch history and search history to stop YouTube from saving your history in the first place.
How to clear your YouTube history on your desktop browser
Unlike on mobile devices, YouTube lets you delete your YouTube watch history and search histories separately on your desktop browser. you may still delete both the search and watch history together if you want.
How to delete your YouTube watch history from your browser
These steps only clear your watch history. If you want to clear your search history, skip to the next section.
How to delete your YouTube search and watch history on your desktop browser
How to pause your YouTube search and watch history on your desktop browser
Like on mobile, this stops YouTube from saving your watch and search data. If there are specific YouTube videos you want to watch without a record, use incognito mode on your browser.
How to set up YouTube auto-delete to clear your history
If you don’t want to delete your YouTube history and pausing YouTube history is too drastic a step, set YouTube to auto-delete all your history after a specified time.
Check out YouTube’s other awesome features
Clearing your search history helps you stay in control of your data. We recommend exploring the rest of what YouTube offers with thesehelpful YouTube featuresyou’re probably not aware of.
