Safari stores your browsing history, cookies, and cached files by default
Every website you visit in Safari gets recorded in your history, along with data those sites store on your device — cookies that remember your login, cached images that load faster next time, and autofill information. Clearing this data removes the record that you visited those sites and deletes the files Safari saved to speed up browsing. On Mac, iPhone, and iPad, the process is the same: open Settings or Safari preferences, find the privacy or history section, and choose what to delete and how far back.
You have two choices: clear everything at once, or set Safari to delete data automatically when you close the browser. Most people do one or the other, depending on whether they want to keep their history between sessions or start fresh each time.
Key Takeaways
- On iPhone and iPad, go to Settings > Safari > Clear History and Website Data and choose a time range — the options are the last hour, today, today and yesterday, or all time.
- On Mac, open Safari > Settings > Privacy, click Manage Website Data, select the sites you want to remove, and click Remove, or click Remove All to delete everything at once.
- You can set Safari to delete history and cookies automatically every time you close the browser by turning on "Remove history items" in Settings or Preferences.
- Clearing history does not sign you out of websites, but it does remove saved passwords unless you specifically protect them in iCloud Keychain.
- Private browsing mode prevents Safari from recording your history in the first place, but it does not hide your activity from your internet provider or network administrator.
Clearing history on iPhone and iPad
Open the Settings app and scroll down to Safari. Tap Clear History and Website Data. You will see four time-range options: the last hour, today, today and yesterday, or all time. Choose the range you want to delete. Safari will remove your browsing history, cookies, and cached data for that period when ready.
If you want to delete data from specific websites instead of everything in a time range, go back to Settings > Safari and tap Manage Website Data instead. You will see a list of every site that has stored data on your device. Scroll to find the ones you want to remove, swipe left on each one, and tap Delete. This method takes longer if you have many sites, but it lets you keep history from sites you trust while removing data from others.
Clearing history on Mac
Open Safari and click Safari in the menu bar at the top of the screen. Select Settings (or Preferences on older versions of macOS). Click the Privacy tab. You will see a button that says Manage Website Data — click it to see every site that has stored cookies or cached files on your Mac.
From here you have two options. To delete everything, click Remove All at the bottom right. To delete specific sites, select them from the list (hold Command and click to select multiple sites at once) and click Remove. Close the window when you are done. If you want to clear your browsing history as well as website data, go back to the Privacy tab and click Remove All Website Data at the bottom of the window — this removes both history and stored site data in one step.
Setting Safari to delete data automatically
Instead of manually clearing history each time, you can tell Safari to delete everything when you close the browser. On iPhone and iPad, go to Settings > Safari and scroll down to find "Remove history items." Tap it and choose a time interval: hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly. Safari will delete history and website data on that schedule automatically, even if you do not manually clear it.
On Mac, open Safari > Settings > Privacy and check the box next to "Remove history items" at the bottom of the window. A dropdown menu will appear — select how often you want Safari to delete data (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly). From that point forward, Safari will clean up automatically on the schedule you chose.
This approach is useful if you want a clean slate regularly but do not want to remember to delete manually. The trade-off is that you lose your browsing history after the time period you set, so you cannot search for a site you visited last week if you set it to delete daily.
Using Private Browsing mode to avoid recording history
Private Browsing mode prevents Safari from recording your history, cookies, and site data in the first place. On iPhone and iPad, open Safari, tap the Tabs icon at the bottom right (it looks like two overlapping squares), and tap Private at the bottom of the screen. On Mac, open Safari and click File > New Private Window, or press Command-Shift-N.
While you are in Private Browsing, Safari will not save your history or let websites store cookies on your device. When you close the private window or tab, nothing is left behind. This is useful when you are using a shared device or a public computer and do not want your activity recorded locally.
Private Browsing does not hide your activity from your internet service provider, your employer's network, or anyone monitoring your home network. It only prevents Safari from storing data on your device. If you need to hide your browsing from your ISP or network, you would need to use a VPN, which is a separate tool that encrypts your traffic.
What gets deleted and what stays
When you clear Safari history, you remove the list of websites you visited, cookies that sites stored to remember you, and cached files (images and code that Safari saved to load pages faster). You do not automatically delete saved passwords, credit card information, or autofill data — those are stored separately in iCloud Keychain and require a separate step to remove.
If you want to delete a saved password, go to Settings > Passwords (on iPhone and iPad) or Safari > Settings > Passwords (on Mac), find the password you want to remove, and delete it. Clearing history also does not sign you out of websites — you remain logged in even after your history is gone. To sign out, you have to visit each site and use its logout button.
Clearing Safari data on a shared device
If you share a device with family members or colleagues, clearing your history removes only your own browsing record, not theirs. Each person's Safari data is tied to their own user account on the device. If you want to make sure no one else can see what you visited, you have to clear history from your own account.
On a shared Mac, each user account has its own Safari history and website data. Clearing history in your account does not affect anyone else's browsing record. On a shared iPhone or iPad, all users share the same Safari history unless you set up separate user accounts (available on iPad with iPadOS 17 and later). If your device does not have separate accounts, clearing history clears it for everyone using that device.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does clearing Safari history delete my saved passwords?
No. Passwords are stored in iCloud Keychain, which is separate from browsing history. Clearing history removes only the record of sites you visited and the cookies they stored. To delete a saved password, go to Settings > Passwords (iPhone and iPad) or Safari > Settings > Passwords (Mac), find the password, and tap Delete.
Will clearing history sign me out of websites?
No. Clearing history removes the record that you visited a site, but it does not delete your login session. You will remain signed in to most websites even after clearing history. To sign out, you have to visit each website and use its logout button or sign-out option.
Can I recover Safari history after I delete it?
Once you clear Safari history, it is gone from your device. If you have iCloud Sync turned on, your history may still exist on other devices or in iCloud backups, but the local copy on the device where you cleared it cannot be recovered. If you need to find a site you visited, check your other devices or search your email for messages from that site.
What is the difference between clearing history and using Private Browsing?
Clearing history removes data that Safari already recorded. Private Browsing prevents Safari from recording data in the first place. Private Browsing does not hide your activity from your internet provider or network — it only keeps Safari from storing it locally on your device.
Does clearing Safari history hide my activity from my internet provider?
No. Clearing Safari history removes the record from your device, but your internet provider can still see which websites you visited because that data passes through their network. To hide your browsing from your ISP, you would need to use a VPN, which encrypts your traffic so the ISP cannot see which sites you visit.