Your browsing history

Get greater control of your Chrome history, organise your Firefox history by website, and back up your history in any browser

Delete Chrome history more selectively

Chrome’s ‘Clear browsing history’ tool only provides basic options when it comes to deleting browsing history. For greater control try the History Eraser extension instead.

To get it, go to www.snipca.com/24380, click ‘Add to Chrome’, then ‘Add extension’. Click Skip when prompted to install the ‘Click&clean’ extension. Once it’s installed open it by clicking its icon (a pencil eraser) at the top right. The Eraser section lets you choose precisely what you want to remove, whether that is browser history, download history, cookies, and so on. Simply tick the relevant boxes.

Next, click the ‘Erase the following items from’ dropdown menu and select a time period (such as a month). Or to select a specific time period, choose the ‘-/-’ option, click the date in the dropdown menu, then pick a day and month in the calendar (see screenshot below left). Selecting 28 April, for example, will delete the items you’ve ticked from that date to the current time. Once you’re ready, click Run Eraser.

Access incognito browsing history in Chrome

We’d recommend using Chrome’s Incognito mode (similar to Inprivate in Edge and Private Browsing in Firefox) whenever you use your browser for tasks like online banking. Sometimes, though, Incognito can be a bit too zealous in hiding your browsing history. For example, it disables the ‘Reopen closed tab’ feature that can be handy if you want to restore a tab you’ve closed accidentally. You can restore this using the Off The Record History extension.

To get it go to www.snipca.com/24389, click ‘Add to Chrome’, then ‘Add Extension’. Next you need to make the extension accessible in Incognito mode. Click the Menu button (the three vertical dots at the top right), ‘More tools’, Extensions, scroll down to Off The Record History, then tick the ‘Allow in incognito’ box. Now, whenever you next use Chrome’s Incognito mode, click the Off The Record History button (at the top right – see screenshot above) to see a list of the tabs you’ve recently closed. Right-click any tab in the list, then click ‘Open link in new tab’ to re-open it. To protect your privacy, the extension will delete all saved tabs when you close the Incognito window.

Organise your Firefox history

By default, Firefox’s browsing history is displayed in a jumbled list of websites and web pages. To impose some order on this install the ‘History in Threads’ add-on. Go to www.snipca.com/24391, click ‘Add to Firefox’, then Install. Next, click the add-on’s icon (a clock) at the top right and you’ll see your history listed by website. Click the small arrow next to any website to view the web pages you visited in date order. To open a page in the list, click it using the middle mouse button (normally the scrolling wheel).

Clear browsing history when you exit Edge

Edge is still light on browsing history options, but you can make it delete your history when you close it. Open Edge, click the Menu button (three horizontal dots at the top right), then Settings. In the ‘Clear browsing data’ section, click ‘Choose what to clear’, make your selection using the tick boxes (‘Browsing history’ and ‘Download history’, for example), then move the ‘Always clear this when I close the browser’ slider to On.