When you search on Google with “Web & App Activity” turned on, Google saves activity like your Search history to your Google Account. To make your experience more personalized, “Web & App Activity” saves data about the things you do across Google services that include associated info like locations. We use your saved activity to give you more personalized experiences, like app and content recommendations.
In My Activity, you can:
- Delete Search history saved to your Google Account.
- Manage Search settings like what activity Google saves and when Google auto deletes your history.
Your Search history can also be saved to your device, like when you use the Google app while you’re signed out of your Google Account. Learn how to manage Search history saved on your device.
Manage saved Search history
Delete Search history
Important: If you delete Search history that’s saved to your Google Account, you can’t get it back.
You can delete a specific activity, or delete your Search history from a specific day, a custom date range, or all time.
- On your computer, go to your Search history in My Activity.
- Choose the Search history you want to delete. You can choose:
- All your Search history: Above your history, click Delete
Delete all time.
- A specific time period: Above your history, click Delete
- A specific day: Next to the day, click Delete all activity from [day]
.
- A specific activity: Next to the activity, click Delete activity item
- All your Search history: Above your history, click Delete
Delete all time.Control your Search history
- On your computer, go to your Search history in My Activity.
- On the left or at the top, click Controls.
- On the "Web & App Activity" card, click the option under "Auto-delete (Off)" or "Auto-delete (On)."
- Choose an option to proceed.
- Depending on when you want to automatically delete your Search history, you can select Auto-delete activity older than and choose 3 months, 18 months, or 36 months.
- If you don't want to delete your Search history automatically, you can select Don't auto-delete activity.
- Click Next.
To pause saving your history:
- On your computer, go to your Search history in My Activity.
- On the left or at the top, click Controls.
- Under "Web & App Activity," click Turn off.
- Click Turn off or Turn off and delete activity.
- If you choose “Turn off and delete activity,” to select and confirm what activity you want to delete, follow the additional steps.
Manage Search history saved on your device
Delete browser historyEven if your Search history isn’t saved to your Google Account, or you delete it from My Activity, your browser might still store it.
You can delete your browser history in:
- Chrome: Learn how to delete browsing history and other browsing data.
- Other browsers: Check your browser’s instructions.
If you’re signed out from your Google Account when you search on Google, you may find recommendations related to your recent search. If you don’t want to get these, turn off Search customization.
- On your computer, go to Google.
- At the bottom, tap Settings
- Turn off Search customization.
How Google deletes your history in your Google Account
When you select to delete activity manually or activity is deleted automatically based on your auto-delete setting, it starts the process of removal from the product and the systems.
First, we aim to remove it from view and the data may no longer be used to personalize your Google experience.
We then begin a process designed to safely and completely delete the data from our storage systems.