How to Clear Browser History on All Browsers on macOS

Every site you visit leaves traces on your Mac: URLs in your history, tracking cookies, autofill entries, and session files that remember your login state. Over time, these files accumulate and can reveal a detailed picture of your browsing habits — even after you close the tab.

This guide covers how to clear browser history and privacy data on every major macOS browser, what each data type actually contains, and how to go deeper than the built-in "Clear History" button. For a broader storage cleanup, see how to free up disk space on Mac.

What Your Browser Stores (and Why It Matters)

macOS browsers persist several categories of data on disk:

• History — every URL you visited, with timestamps. Stored in SQLite databases.
• Cookies — session tokens, tracking IDs, and site preferences. Some expire in years.
• Form data — autofill entries for names, addresses, emails, and passwords you typed into forms.
• Sessions — files that restore your open tabs and windows after a restart.
• Web storage — LocalStorage, IndexedDB, and site databases used by web apps for tracking or caching.

Most browsers let you clear some of this, but rarely all of it in one pass — and never across multiple browsers at once.

Safari

Clear history from the menu

1. Open Safari.
2. Choose History → Clear History…
3. Select the time range (last hour, today, today and yesterday, or all history).
4. Click Clear History.

This removes history, cookies, and website data for the chosen period — but it does not delete form data, saved sessions, or LocalStorage.

Delete form data and sessions manually

• Form Values: ~/Library/Safari/Form Values
• Last session: ~/Library/Safari/LastSession.plist
• Recently closed tabs: ~/Library/Safari/RecentlyClosedTabs.plist
• Saved state: ~/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.Safari.savedState
• LocalStorage: ~/Library/Safari/LocalStorage
• Databases: ~/Library/Safari/Databases

Quit Safari before deleting any of these files.

Google Chrome

Clear browsing data from settings

1. Open Chrome and press Shift + Command + Delete.
2. Choose the time range and check Browsing history, Cookies and other site data, and Cached images and files.
3. Click Clear data.

Chrome groups history, cookies, and cache together, but it does not clear form autofill data, session restore files, or IndexedDB by default.

Deep-clean Chrome profiles

Chrome stores per-profile data under:

~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default
~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Profile 1
…

Key files per profile:

Quit Chrome before deleting any of these.

Firefox

Clear recent history

1. Open Firefox and press Shift + Command + Delete.
2. Select the time range and check the items you want to clear.
3. Click Clear Now.

Firefox offers more granular control than most browsers, but its places.sqlite database stores both history and bookmarks — deleting it would also remove your bookmarks.

Manual cleanup per profile

Firefox profiles live under:

~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/<profile-name>.default-release

Microsoft Edge, Brave, Arc, Vivaldi, Opera

All Chromium-based browsers follow the same structure as Chrome, just in different folders:

Each has Default and Profile N subfolders containing the same History, Cookies, Web Data, and Sessions files as Chrome.

To clear history from the UI, use Shift + Command + Delete (same shortcut as Chrome) and select the data types.

What "Clear History" Misses

The built-in clear-history dialogs in every browser leave behind:

• Autofill and form data — your name, email, address, and search queries typed into forms.
• Session restore files — snapshots of open tabs that survive restarts.
• IndexedDB and LocalStorage — persistent web storage used for tracking and caching.
• Multi-profile data — most browsers only clean the default profile unless you select otherwise.
• Cross-browser residue — clearing Safari does nothing for Chrome, and vice versa.

Automate Deep Privacy Cleanup with NythyCleaner

NythyCleaner's Privacy section scans all installed browsers at once and reports exactly what data exists and how much space it uses. It covers:

• Safari — history, cookies, form values, sessions, LocalStorage, databases.
• Chromium browsers — Chrome, Edge, Brave, Arc, Vivaldi, Opera, Chromium, Iridium. All profiles are scanned automatically.
• Firefox — cookies, form history, sessions, web storage (bookmarks are preserved).

Each item shows a risk level (high for history and cookies, medium for sessions and storage) and the exact file paths involved. You select what to remove and NythyCleaner deletes the files safely — quitting the browser first is recommended.

You can combine this with:

• System cleanup — browser caches, logs, and other system traces.
• Disk space — treemap view to find large folders outside browser data.

Safety Checklist

• Quit the browser before deleting its data files.
• Do not delete places.sqlite in Firefox — it contains your bookmarks.
• Do not delete Login Data or key4.db — those store saved passwords.
• If you use multiple Chrome profiles, verify you are cleaning the right one.

Summary

Clearing browser history manually is a good habit, but it leaves gaps. NythyCleaner fills those gaps by scanning every browser and every profile on your Mac, showing you exactly what persists, and letting you remove it in one workflow.