How to Clear Your Browsing History in Microsoft Edge
Edge is Microsoft’s new browser that comes included with Windows 10, and meant to replace the oft-maligned Internet Explorer. And while it may look and feel significantly different from most browsers, it still has a lot of the same functions–you just need to know where to look.
Like any other browser, Edge records a history of the sites you visit when you use it. There’s nothing you can do this unless you browse in InPrivate mode, which like other browser’s private modes, doesn’t record your activities as you surf the Internet.
InPrivate is fine to a certain extent, but the biggest problem is that if you visit websites that require logins, then you have to always retype your username and password, because InPrivate doesn’t store cookies. Once you close the tab, everything is deleted. So, it’s good if you don’t want to leave a history, but not so practical if you want to store usernames and passwords for your favorites websites.
The solution, then, if you want to hide your history, is to simply delete that history on a regular basis.
To do this on Edge, click the three dots in the browser’s upper-right corner. At the bottom of the resulting menu, click “Settings”.
With the settings open, click “Choose what to clear” under “Clear browsing data”.
Now you have some decisions to make. There’s some stuff here that you may not want to necessarily clear out, like passwords and form data, but you might want to select “Download history” and definitely “Browsing history”.
If you click “Show more” you can see even more options, but for the most part, you’re unlikely to really need to mess with these.
When you’ve made all your selections, click the “Clear” button and your browsing history will be sent off into the oblivion. Just remember, as soon as you start browsing the web again, Edge will begin recording your history once more, so you will have to keep clearing your history as we just described.
There’s also a faster way to clear your browsing history. Instead of opening up the settings, click the three lines to the left of the three dots. From here, you can see not only your browsing history, but your download history as well, and you can clear both, either all at once, or one site at a time.
To do this, simply hover over the item you want to delete, and then click the “X” that appears next to it.
If you click “Clear all history” the “Clear browsing history” panel (shown earlier) will slide out and you can again choose to delete everything including cookies, form data, and so on.
That’s all there is to clearing your browsing history in Microsoft Edge. It’s just as simple as on other browsers once you know how to do it. If you’re even the least bit privacy conscious, but you don’t want to be limited by your browser’s privacy mode, then you can at least take steps to minimize your browsing footprint and hide it from prying eyes.