How-To
Google now lets you delete the last 15 minutes of your search history – here’s how to do it
A button that nukes the last fifteen minutes of shame from your Google Search history is an absolute lifesaver.
We’ve all done it. Opened something questionable in Google Chrome without turning Incognito mode on and being sucked into a rabbit hole of similarly questionable content. Whoops. Now, you could go through your history and delete every single offending webpage before someone notices, but now you won’t have to.
Announced at I/O 2021, Google is adding a handy button to the Search app for Android and iOS that lets you delete the last 15 minutes of your search history with one simple tap. Nice. Before this, you could only delete your history in longer increments, starting at one hour and ending at the slightly ominous “All Time.”
How to quickly delete the last 15 minutes of your Google Search history
We haven’t seen the update hit our Google app yet on our iPhone 11 Pro running iOS 15, but Google says it’s available, so it’s probably in the process of rolling out to users. The shortcut will also be coming to Android later this year.
Once your Google app has the update, here’s how to use it.
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Open up the Google app on your device.
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Tap your Profile avatar
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Tap Delete last 15 min.
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You’ll get a confirmation page saying Deleting Search history from your Google Account. Changes will Show soon., and an Undo button in case you change your mind.
That’s it; enjoy having a quick way to nuke fifteen minutes of shame from your Google Search history. Maybe just use Incognito mode next time, OK?
Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.
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