You can protect your privacy and cover your tracks by clearing your browsing data in Chrome for Android
We've all been here: A friend asks to borrow your phone (or just steals it), and you start to sweat, fully aware of what's lurking there in your browser history.
What if they see that you're secretly addicted to looking up random cat facts? What if they discover whatever other guilty pleasure you may have? Don't worry. With just a simple preventative measure, we can keep all those things secret. With Chrome on Android, we can clear our browsing data, or the browsing history.
Here's how:
Step 1: Open the overflow menu
At the top of the screen when you open Chrome, you'll see three dots stacked on top of each other in the upper right-hand corner. That's called the "overflow menu." Select those dots.
Step 2: Select "History"
Doing so will bring up a new menu. Scroll down until you see "History" and press on that.
Step 3: Clear browsing data
From there, you'll see sites you've accessed recently. You can press on the X next to any of the sites that show up here to delete individual sites from your history. To erase your entire history, look at the bottom of your screen and press "Clear browsing data..."
Note that, whether you clear your entire history or you just clear one or two sites on your Android device, the same sites will be cleared from your Chrome history on your desktop by default.
Step 4: Specify what you want to clear
When you press "Clear browsing data," you'll get some options. You can just clear the sites from your browsing history. You can also clear your cache, which clears out temporary files that the browser thinks it could use again. Cookies are used by sites to track browsing sessions, and you can choose to clear those as well. Clearing passwords will make it so you'll have to log in to sites again. Clearing autofill data makes it so you won't have the benefit of having certain things fill in automatically (like your name when filling out forms), although you can build that data up again. Select "Clear" once you've decided what you want to have cleared.
Another screen with more options will pop up after you select "Clear," but the selected items will have already been cleared by this point.
Cool! Now nobody else has to know about those guilty pleasures. (And it's worth noting that if you're syncing Chrome data with your Google account, you can clear all this stuff from your desktop browser, too!)
Reader comments
How to clear your browsing data in Chrome
And if you use Swiftkey, don't forget to make sure it doesn't learn website addresses and start helpfully suggesting them as soon as you start to type "www." ;)
You're the man. I've been trying to figure out why deleted history sites were still popping up.
But this deletes your entire history & cache. It is easier to just use "incognito" mode when browsing sites you don't want stored in your history.
There is a way to choose what to delete and what to leave.
To do this go to the home page, bottom right corner click clock icon, then show all history. You can then x out individual sites or clear everything as shown in the article.
AC every day
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/wdpn8qbcrhti7lk/AADt2dIh_zmHPcxAmATvpOUwa?dl=0
Like this
AC every day
CCleaner has a nice free app that does similar and more. Also, It can save a few taps to get the job done.
When I open Chrome on my GS3 no matter what page it opens I don't see the 3 dots. So I just tapped the menu button and wen to the History tab and tapped clear history, much like I do on the desktop. Not sure why I don't see the 3 dots but at least the history is cleared now :)
The three dots aren't there because the menu button replaces that functionality.
Good article although I feel you could have talked a bit about incognito mode.
Posted with my Nexus 4 running L
If you really want to see those "guilty pleasures" sites, there's always the Incognito Mode. :D
Also, I have had the worst luck in consistently clearing out the search history on the Google Now Widget. I realize that Google wants that info to try to personalize the cards it displays but for the love of God, let us clear it out in a simple manner...if we want to.
I've found you have to clear your history, Log out of google. Logout out the widget from Google and reboot the phone. Sometimes that will work and other times it won’t.
Google just needs to grow a pair and have a setting for "Delete known porn sites from history when leaving the app", same with Swiftkey.
Posted via Android Central App
Incognito mode ;)
Posted via Android Central App