Deleting Firefox Browsing History

Leave no trace. Learn to clear Firefox history in this tutorial. You can also delete history for selected websites and timeframe.
Warp Terminal

Firefox stores your browsing history. This way, you can see what web pages you had visited at what time. This also helps in revisiting the websites as Firefox auto-suggests websites from the history as you start typing in the address bar.

However, you may find yourself in a situation where you don't want to record browsing history, specially for certain websites or time periods.

In this beginner's tutorial, I'll show you how you can clear the Firefox history.

Delete Firefox browsing history from the settings

Open Firefox and Click on the top-right hamburger menu. Now select History.

Inside the top-right-hamburger menu, click on History button
Click on History

On the next page, click on Clear Recent History.

Click on clear recent history option
Clear Recent History option

From the next page, check most of the boxes that contain things related to browsing history.

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You can delete history for a certain time period as well. By default, it deletes history for the past hour. You can change it and delete the entire history.
Click on clear now button after confirming which part needs to be removed
Clear History

You can also clear data like Site Settings (settings applied to particular sites, like the permissions) and Offline Website Data (files stored on the device by your confirmation so that you can access something when you are offline).

When checked the required fields, click Clear Now, to clear the data.

Clear browsing history in Firefox automatically on exit

If you do not want Firefox to remember history ever, you can set it to automatically delete history when you close Firefox.

Click on the top-right hamburger menu and select settings.

Inside the top-right hamburger menu, click on the Settings option
Click on Settings

Go to Privacy and Security section. From there, scroll down to reach the History part. There, on the drop-down box near Firefox Will, select โ€œuse custom settings for historyโ€.

Select Custom Settings for History from the drop-down menu in Privacy and Security Section
Custom Settings for History

Now, check on the โ€œโ€ checkbox and click on Settings button.

Check the "Clear History when Firefox closes" button and click on the adjacent settings button
Clear History when Firefox Closes

On the next screen, select elements that correspond to history and click OK button.

Check all the entries that you want to clear and click OK
Select the sections to clear

Firefox will remember the settings and will remove the history when you close the browser.

Delete individual websites from Firefox history

Thankfully, you can selectively delete history in Firefox. This means that you can delete the browsing history for selected websites.

First, click on the top-right hamburger menu and go to history.

Clcik on the History button under the main menu button
Click on History

Now, select Manage History.

Click on the Manage History option to access the Library
Select Manage History

Here, you can search for a particular website by entering the name in the search box.

Search for a website in the history
Search for a Website inside history

Once you find the website whose history needs to be cleared, right-click on it and select Forget About This Site option.

After right-clicking on a website, click on Forget About This Site option
Click on Forget About this Site

Just click on forget, to clear the data.

Click on Forget button to confirm deletion
Click on Forget

You can also clear history by a particular day. Right-click on a particular day and click Delete.

Delete history by day
Delete History by Day

It will delete it for that day.

๐Ÿ’กQuickly clear Firefox history using Forget Button

Find the steps for going into the settings and clearing history too cumbersome? There is a quicker way of doing this.

Firefox has a Forget button available, but not shown by default. Click on the menu button and go to More Tools option.

Click on More Tools option under the top-right main menu
Select More Tools

Select Customize Toolbar.

Select Custmize Toolbar option
Select Customize Toolbar

You can also access the customize toolbar option by right-clicking on a blank space near the address bar.

Get toolbar customize option by right-clicking on a blank space near address bar
Customize Toolbar

On the next screen, locate the Forget button.

Locate forget button in the tools available screen
Locate Forget Button

Drag and drop it to a place near the address bar, and click on Done.

Click "Done" button after dragging and dropping the Forget button to the toolbar
Forget Icon in Toolbar

Now, Click on the Forget button.

Click on the forget button, that we have placed on the toolbar to access the various clearing options
Clearing with Forget button

Select the duration of which you want to forget (five minutes, Two hours and 24 hours). Click on Forget to forget the selected duration.

It will close all the tabs and reopen a clean window.

The history of the selected duration is cleared by the forget action
Forget Complete

Bonus tip: Never remember history

While Private browsing mode is more appropriate for this, you can still make your Firefox more private by default by making it not record the browsing history.

Click on Settings.

Click on Settings from the main menu
Click on Settings

Go to Privacy and Security and change the settings to Never Remember History.

Select Never Remember History in Privacy and Security Section's History Section
Never Remember History

This will ask you to restart the browser, do it. From now on, Firefox will not remember history.

If you go back to the same Settings > Privacy and Security > History, you can see that the option has been changed to โ€œAlways Use Private Modeโ€.

Always Use Private Mode settings in Privacy and Security
Always Use Private Mode
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If you have any add-ons installed, which has no permission to run in Private mode, those will not work for you under this setting. You may need to change the permission for those add-ons to work on private mode also.

Keeping things private

The history deletion in Firefox is quite similar to clearing cache. That's another way to keep your browsing clean.

How to Clear the Firefox Cache [With Screenshots]
Learn to clear the Firefox cache with this simple screenshot guide. Youโ€™ll also learn about dedicated extensions and automatic cache clear.

Firefox is an awesome browser and people often do not utilize all of its features. Here are a few tips about that.

6 Awesome Firefox Features You Should Be Using Right Now
Love Firefox? Youโ€™ll love it even more if you start using these awesome features in Firefox and make your browsing experience even more awesome.

You can greatly improve your browser experience with add-ons in Firefox.

11 Best Firefox Extensions to Improve Browsing Experience
Use these Firefox add-ons to step up your browsing experience!

Enjoy Firefox!

About the author
Sreenath

Sreenath

Linux tinkerer by day, Lord of the Rings fanatic by night. When I'm not busy conquering the command line, you can find me kicking back and watching some football while quoting JRR Tolkien

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