Clean out your browsing history

Following on from the blog “Spring clean your computer” posted couple of weeks ago, another idea is to clear out your browsing history.

Clearing your browsing history isn’t just a way to hide whatever websites you’ve been looking at, but deleting temporary files and your history will clear space and help ensure your computer is running fast. If you’ve experienced problems on certain websites it will also clear “cached” pages. Cached pages are computer speak for pages where your computer holds the memory of the page rather than the latest version of it.

Here’s how to clear the history on your PC for several common browsers:

Safari

1. Click on “Edit”
2. Then choose the “Reset Safari” option
3. You will then see a box with multiple options – select whether you want to empty the cache, clear downloads, remove all cookies and website icons, etc
4. Choose carefully, because if you remove all cookies and AutoFill you may find it annoying later
5. Click “Reset” and you’re done.

For Safari on an iPad

1. Go to “Settings”
2. Select “Safari”
3. Then scroll to Clear History and Website Data.

Be careful, because you don’t have any options – it’s all or nothing when you “Clear”.

Firefox

1. Go to the tool bar
2. Select “Tools”
3. Select “Clear Recent History”.

Firefox actually allows you to clear your browsing history by the hour, so if you prefer, you can clear your files based on the past few hours of browsing time only. As in Safari, you can select which files you want to purge.

Chrome

1. From the Customise menu choose “More Tools”
2. Then “Clear browsing data”.

Again you can choose which files to delete, and the time frame (from the last hour out to the beginning of time!).

Internet Explorer

1. Select “Tools”
2. Select “Safety”
3. Select “Delete Browsing History” – just like the other browsers, you can select which elements you want to purge
4. Click “Delete” and you’re done.

You may not see a noticeable difference in the speed of your computer but it’s still a good idea to purge your history every now and again.