How to clear YouTube history completely – Setapp

YouTube: A complete guide to protecting privacy, teaching you to clear viewing and search history

YouTube is the world's largest video platform, second only to Google, and ranks second in website visits. It uses and uploads videos for free, with over a billion hours of content viewing on the platform every day.

So, you're likely to use YouTube to watch tutorials, music videos, and even your favorite blogger videos often – it's awesome, YouTube is actually the largest free university in the world where you can learn anything about anything.

The problem is that since the service is free, YouTube also uses your data and video history to build your shadow profile, recording what you like so that it can recommend better videos to you and allow you to watch for longer (and thus collect more advertising revenue as well).

To those who care about privacy, it sounds like a privacy violation, and they may wonder if there is a way to stop it. Let's explore various ways to clear YouTube history, including YouTube viewing history and YouTube search history.

Why delete YouTube history?

By default, as long as you log in to YouTube, it will record all the videos you watch on the website. This allows YouTube's algorithm to mark certain videos as viewed and remove them from suggestions, but it can also find out which videos you watch frequently and suggest more of these videos.

To view your YouTube history on the website, simply click on the History tab in the sidebar.

Some people may be reluctant to share this information with YouTube, or even let others (on a shared account or computer) see what they have watched before. So they might want to find a way to delete YouTube viewing history and even pause any future record collection.

How to clear YouTube search and viewing video history

Fortunately, YouTube offers some ways to limit the amount of data it collects, including deleting your search and viewing history.

To delete a specific video from your search history, simply select the History tab and click the Remove from Viewing History icon next to any video. If you need to find a specific past video you want to delete, you can also use the Search Viewing History field. If you want to delete everything, YouTube will provide a convenient "Clear All Viewing History" option in the right sidebar.

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Free Trial For specific items in YouTube search history, you can click on the empty search field in the top bar and select "Delete" next to searches you don't like.

But there is a more nuanced way to control your YouTube history:

1. In the History tab, go to Watch and Search History. Your YouTube viewing history and search history will be displayed on a timeline.
2. Scroll through the timeline (or use search), delete a specific entry, or click the trash can icon next to a specific date to delete everything for that date.
3. You can also click Delete next to Filter by date and select Delete history for the last hour, the most recent day, all times, or custom ranges.

You can also delete YouTube history via mobile apps, but this won't give you a lot of options:

1. Click on the "Database" at the bottom
2. Select History
3. Click on three dots and select "History Control"
4. Select Clear Viewing History or Clear Search History

Note: Once you delete your YouTube viewing history, you can’t recover it – so choose carefully!

How to pause YouTube history and search collection

Now, if you want YouTube to forget some of your videos or searches, you know what to do. But if you don't want YouTube to collect any information about your history at all, deleting your viewing and search history is only half the success—you may also want to make sure YouTube won't collect more information about you in the future.

YouTube calls this feature "pause viewing history." You can activate this option by going to the History tab and clicking Pause View History ➙ Pause. If you want more meticulous control, especially in search history, you need to perform the following steps:

1. Go to the History tab
2. Click "Watch and Search History"
3. Select Save Activity
4. Turn off YouTube history or uncheck various options for search and history

However, it can be helpful to know that you have recently watched videos, and seeing them over and over in your recommendations can be annoying. So there is also a balanced intermediate step – you can set your YouTube history to automatically delete after a certain amount of time so you can see the videos you watched in the last month without having YouTube collect your years of archives.

To set the automatic deletion history option:

1. Go to the History tab on YouTube
2. Click "Watch and Search History"
3. Select "Auto Delete"
4. Choose the right time range: 3 months, 18 months, or 36 months
5. Click "Next"➙"I know"

How to hide your YouTube viewing history

Sometimes, you might want to find a way to hide your YouTube viewing history without considering configuring different settings, etc. The easiest way is to use private or invisible mode in your browser:

• In Safari, you can turn on private mode using Shift ⌘ N or select File ➙ New Private Window.
• In Google Chrome, you can also use Shift ⌘ N or go to the three dot menu in the top bar and select New Invisible Window.
• In Firefox, use Shift ⌘P or File ➙ to create a new private window.

The downside of using private mode is that you cannot use any of your subscriptions and "watch later" or other playlists. And, if you pay to use YouTube to not display ads, you will see ads again. In addition, you must open an additional browser window.

However, there is also a way to watch YouTube without any of your history at any time—using Elmedia Player.

Elmedia Player is an excellent video player. It can turn on any video or audio format and use accelerated decoding to play HD video without any malfunctions. On top of that, Elmedia Player has a built-in browser that allows you to stream and download YouTube videos without any ads or save data to your viewing history.

To use the Elmedia Player browser:

1. Start Elmedia Player
2. In the menu, select File > Open Online Video
3. Paste your YouTube video or playlist link
4. Watch ad-free videos on your Mac or stream them to Apple TV, Chromecast, or DLNA

Downie is another popular way to hide YouTube history. It is not a media player, but a fast and intuitive YouTube downloader that supports videos up to 4K quality, but can also extract only audio (for example, from music videos). In fact, with Downie, you just drag and drop or paste links from over 1200 video sites, or use the search function directly in the app. Watching videos in secret has never been easier!

PullTube is an excellent Downie alternative to download videos from YouTube and over 1000 other video sites. This app can capture subtitles, convert files to various formats, and trim the length of audio or video, getting only the parts you need. Additionally, PullTube provides extensions for all browsers, so you can download any videos you find online right away.

As you can see, the answer to how to delete YouTube history is not complicated. Simply follow the instructions above to limit the amount of data you collect from YouTube. Also, consider watching videos privately with Elmedia Player or downloading them directly to your Mac using apps like Downie and PullTube.

Best of all, you can try Elmedia Player, Downie, and PullTube completely free with Setapp’s seven-day free trial, a platform with over 210 top Mac applications that can help you with any task you can imagine, from creating the perfect color palette (Aquarelo) to enhancing your audio (Boom 3D). Try each Setapp app for free today and discover dozens of apps you will use in the next few years!

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