It happens to all of us, you “accidentally” browse to an unsavory website on your iPhone’s browser. Now you want to delete all traces of having visited that site from the browser’s history. How do you do it? Follow these simple instructions:
1. Tap the Mobile Safari icon:
2. Tap the Bookmark icon at the bottom of the screen.
3. If your view is like the one below, tap History, otherwise, skip to next step:
4. Tap the Clear button at the bottom left of the screen:
5. Tap Clear History:
You have now deleted your history of visited sites. Also note that you have deleted your history of Google searches on the iPhone. Yes, it also keeps a history of search terms too. It does this for the same reason it keeps visited URLs: to save you time. But following the above instructions will delete both types of browsing history, so my, I mean, your habit of visiting AnneHathawayPictures.com need not be revealed.
Note: You may still continue to see some URLs and other terms in that dropdown list. These are either default bookmarks from Apple or bookmarks you have made, they are not a part of your browser’s history.
Try the iPhone’s New Private Browsing Mode
If you are going to be spending some time browsing unsavory websites on your iPhone, try the new Private Browsing Mode, which won’t save any browsing data (history of websites visited, cache images, etc). See our instructions on How to Turn on the iPhone’s Private Browsing Mode.
A Clear History Option in the iPhone’s Settings
What about the Clear History option in the iPhone Settings? What does that do?
Yes, there is an alternative method of deleting Mobile Safari’s history in the iPhone ‘s Settings menu (see picture below). However, it’s not as effective, as it doesn’t also clear your Google searches. For example, if you searched for Anne Hathaway Pictures in Google, the next time someone entered the letter A in the Google search bar, your search keywords for the sexy young starlet would show up in a dropdown list. Busted!
What about Clear Cache and Clear History in the Settings menu? What do those do?
You can clear two other types of data in the iPhone Settings menu: cache and cookies. It sounds like a snack, but really the cache and cookies are data your browser keeps to make your web browsing experience more fluid.
A cache is saved data from websites (eg, buttons, icons, banners, etc) that helps websites load quicker. Clearing your cache is way to clear some of your iPhone’s memory and may improve speed performance.
Cookies hold your online “personality” so websites can know something about you when you visit. An example of this is visiting Amazon.com and seeing that annoying “Hello, John Smith!” at the top. Clear your cookies to avoid such irritation.