Contents
- 1 Desktop: How to Delete Items from Your YouTube Watch and Search History
- 2 Desktop: How to Clear Your Entire YouTube Watch and Search History
- 3 Mobile: How to Delete Items from Your YouTube History on Android or iPhone
- 4 Mobile: How Clear Your Entire YouTube Watch History and Search History
- 5 Extra: How to Clear Your Browser History
- 6 Extra: How to Clear File Explorer Search History
Did you know that YouTube keeps a log of not just every video you watch, but every video you search for? All of it is fed into the service’s recommendation algorithm and advertisements, which target you based on this data. Mostly, though, it’s there so that you can find videos you watched previously. Today we’re going to show you how to delete your YouTube history and search history so that Google resets your recommendations.
You can clear YouTube history in your account
Before we start, it’s worth noting that YouTube won’t save your search and watch histories if you aren’t signed in with your Google account. If you didn’t sign in, you only have your browser history to worry about, which we’ll cover further down.
YouTube also has an “Incognito” mode on Android, which will stop your search history from being logged by your device. However, if you already watched the video you want to hide, that won’t be of much help. That’s why we’re going to how to erase your YouTube history below:
Desktop: How to Delete Items from Your YouTube Watch and Search History
Most of the time, there will only be one or two videos or searches you want to clear from your YouTube history. This is quite easy to achieve on desktop:
- Press the hamburger icon in the top-left and click “History”
- Hover over the video you want to delete from your YouTube history and press the “X” to the right of its thumbnail
If you don’t see your YouTube watch history, make sure you have selected “Watch history” in the right-hand sidebar.
- Press “Watch and search history” in the right sidebar
- Press the “X” next to the search terms you want to delete to remove them
Desktop: How to Clear Your Entire YouTube Watch and Search History
If you’ve watched a lot of sensitive videos or you just want a clean slate, you can also clear your entire YouTube watch history. Here’s how:
- Open the hamburger menu and click “History”
- Press “Clear all watch history” in the sidebar
YouTube will instantly delete all of the videos you’ve watched from your watch history.
Mobile: How to Delete Items from Your YouTube History on Android or iPhone
If you do most of your watching on mobile, you’ll know that the UI there is slightly different. We’ll show you how to clear specific videos from your YouTube history on Android below, and the process should be very similar on iOS or iPad.
- Press the “Library” icon in the bottom-right corner
- Click on “History”
- Press the three dots next to the video and tap “Remove from watch history”
Mobile: How Clear Your Entire YouTube Watch History and Search History
Just like on the desktop, also on the YouTube-App on mobile you can clear your entire YouTube watch and search history to reset your recommendations and get a fresh slate. Here’s how:
- Press the “Library” button in the bottom right of the YouTube app
- Tap “History” in the list
Step description
- Press the three dots in the top right
- Choose “History controls”
- Press “Clear watch history”, then “Clear search history”
Extra: How to Clear Your Browser History
Now you have deleted your YouTube watch and search history, but the videos you watched will still show in your browser history. To remedy that, follow our guide on how to clear browser history in Chrome, Edge, Firefox, or Opera.
Extra: How to Clear File Explorer Search History
While you’re on a privacy sweep, you may also want to follow our guide on how to clear your File Explorer search history.
