It’s not always convenient to delete your entire history, but you can instead choose to delete certain websites from your history (and the data you leave on your device). Here’s how to do it in Safari for iPhone and iPad.
How to remove websites from Safari History
Safari will log any websites you visit unless you’re using private browsing. Once the website is in your history, it will appear in the URL bar when you start typing a related term. There are many reasons why you might want to trim certain websites, and it’s easy to do.
Open Safari and tap the “Bookmarks” icon at the bottom of the screen (it looks like an open book).
A popup will appear with three tabs for Bookmarks, Reading List, and History. Click on the clock icon to see your history.
You can now swipe left on any entry in your history and tap Delete to permanently remove it.
Instead of scrolling through the entire history of visited websites, you can also search for specific terms or URLs using the on-screen search box. But that’s not the only clue a website might have left on your device.
Related: How to change the default search engine in Safari on iPhone or iPad
How to delete the data of a specific site
Websites leave all kinds of data on your device including cached images and cookies. If you want to remove all website tags, it is also important to remove website data.
Start Settings and click on Safari > Advanced > Website Data. This list may take a while to load as Safari fetches a complete list of website data and estimates how much storage each entry takes up on your device.
You can now follow the same procedure as above by swiping left on any websites you wish to forget and hit the Delete button that appears.
You can also search for specific websites using the search bar at the top of the screen, or turn everything off using the Remove All Website Data button at the bottom of the menu.
Note that if you remove website data (or erase everything), there may be some drawbacks such as having to sign in again or emptying your cart.
Related: Clearing cookies all the time makes the web more annoying
Don’t forget the private browsing mode
You can use Safari’s private browsing mode at any time to visit a website without registering it on your device. To do this, tap the tab icon in the bottom right corner of the screen followed by the number of tabs you have open at the bottom of the screen. From here, click on “Private” to switch to a private browsing session.
Note that all tabs in your browsing session will remain open until you close them, so be sure to close anything that might jeopardize your privacy.
For a better handling of your iPhone or iPad privacy settings, we recommend that you perform a periodic iOS privacy check.
Related: How to Check and Tighten All iPhone Privacy Settings
