How to Delete Your Google Activity History: Easy Steps 2026

To delete your Google activity history, sign in at myactivity.google.com, open the three-dot menu, choose Delete activity by, set the range to All time and the filter to All products, then confirm. The whole thing takes about five minutes, and it works the same whether you’re on a laptop, an Android phone or an iPhone.

One thing worth knowing before you start: Google keeps two different kinds of history. Your browser keeps a local record of pages you visited, and your Google account keeps a server-side record of everything you searched, watched, asked and tapped across Google’s services. Clearing the wrong one is the single most common mistake people make, and it leaves the other untouched.

What You Need

You need three things: the Google account you actually sign into day to day, a web browser or the relevant phone app, and about five minutes. That’s it. There is no separate tool and no support ticket.

Make sure you’re on the right account first. If your browser holds more than one Google login, open myactivity.google.com and look at the profile picture in the top right corner before you delete anything. Deleting activity from the wrong account is unrecoverable for that account.

Export a backup first if any of that history matters to you. Google Takeout builds an archive of your data, and creating one before you start costs a few minutes and a confirmation click on each product you include.

Know that deletion is permanent. There is no undo button and no support path to bring a deleted search back, which is why the backup step above exists.

Two account types change the whole process. On supervised child accounts, Family Link accounts and work or school accounts managed by an employer, the delete option is often greyed out or hidden entirely, because the administrator decides the retention policy. Nothing you do on the settings screen will unlock it.

Step-by-Step

Start on the web, because the desktop view exposes every filter the mobile app hides. These five steps cover how to delete your Google activity history in full, rather than the last hour or the last day.

1. Open myactivity.google.com and sign in with the account you want to clear.
2. Open the three-dot menu in the top right corner of the page, next to the Google apps grid.
3. Choose Delete activity by.
4. Set the date range to All time instead of Today, and set the product filter to All products instead of Search.
5. Tap Delete, then confirm in the pop-up. Google warns you that this removes activity permanently and cannot be undone.

You know it worked when the list empties and you’re left with an activity feed showing nothing for that period. Open myactivity.google.com again a few minutes later to confirm, since the page sometimes still shows the old list from a cached view. A hard refresh usually clears it.

Where to find My Activity on each device

The route differs by device, but every path lands on the same page. Pick the line that matches what you’re holding.

• Desktop: Go to myactivity.google.com/product/search directly, or reach it through Google Account > Data & privacy > History settings > My Activity.
• Android: Open the Google app, tap your profile picture in the top right, choose Manage your Google Account, scroll to Data & privacy, tap History settings, then tap My Activity.
• iPhone: Open the Gmail app, tap your profile picture at the top right, tap Manage your Google Account, choose Data & privacy, then History settings and My Activity.
• Any device, fastest route: Search the menu for my activity in the settings search box and open the result directly.

From the My Activity page on any device, tap Delete at the top to get the same delete panel the desktop menu opens, or tap More to pick a specific product.

Deleting single items instead of everything

Not every deletion needs a blank slate. On the My Activity page, hover or tap an entry to get the three-dot menu beside it, then choose Delete for that one item. Tapping Select all at the top of the list, then choosing items with the checkboxes, lets you delete a batch and skip the rest. This is the sane route when you want to clear one afternoon’s searches rather than years of them.

You can also skip the screen entirely and ask the Assistant. On a phone, saying “Hey Google, delete my last conversation” clears recent Assistant activity, and similar phrasing handles recent location. The Assistant route touches a narrow slice of recent items, so use the full delete panel when you want a proper clear-out.

How to Delete Google Activity by Product

My Activity holds every product in one timeline, so each category has its own entry point and its own delete option. Using the filter rather than deleting everything gives you a targeted clear that leaves the rest intact.

• Search: On the My Activity page, set the filter to Search (or All time plus Search under Delete activity by). This covers searches typed into Google, Chrome, YouTube and Google app searches on your account. It does not remove the browsing history stored inside the Chrome app on that specific device.
• Location: Location has its own settings page rather than a filter. Open Google Account > Data & privacy > Location settings > Location History, choose the time range you want to remove, then Delete. Timeline entries in Google Maps and the location dots on your calendar disappear with it.
• YouTube: Filter My Activity to YouTube and delete the entries there to clear watch and search activity. Your channel, uploads, playlists, subscriptions and comments are separate objects and are untouched by this step.
• Voice and Assistant: Filter to Assistant or open Google Account > Data & privacy > Assistant & Gemini activity to see your voice conversations and requests. Deleting here does not affect smart speaker or display recordings stored under a different account.
• Chrome: Chrome activity in My Activity covers searches made through Chrome’s address bar. Deleting it does not clear Chrome’s own on-device history, so also open chrome://history and delete that separately if you need both gone.

The distinction that catches people out: deleting activity removes the log entry, not the thing the entry points at. Removing a YouTube watch history entry leaves the video and your account exactly where they were. Removing a search entry leaves the page you visited online. Deletion here is about the record, not the content or the service.

Set Automatic Deletion Controls

Auto-delete is the setting that stops history from piling up again after you clear it. It lives at Google Account > Data & privacy > History settings > Web & App Activity > Auto-delete.

Three retention windows are offered: 3 months, 18 months and 36 months. Pick the shortest one your routine tolerates. Three months suits someone decluttering a phone they are about to hand over. Eighteen months suits most people, because it keeps enough history for useful recommendations while stopping indefinite storage. Thirty-six months only suits you if you want year-old context to remain available.

Turning it off is just as easy: reopen the same panel and choose Don’t auto-delete. To check what is currently active, open History settings and look at the Web & App Activity row, which shows the retention window in plain text next to the Auto-delete label.

Two limits are worth stating plainly. Auto-delete applies to activity under Web & App Activity, and not every product type sits under that control, so check Location History and YouTube history separately if those matter to you. And you still have to turn Web & App Activity on in the first place for any of it to be collecting.

Common Mistakes

Almost every complaint I have seen about this process traces back to one of a handful of mix-ups. Each has a straightforward fix.

• Deleting from the wrong account. If you have a work account and a personal one, check the profile picture at the top of myactivity.google.com before deleting. Everything you remove comes off whichever account is signed in.
• Leaving the date range on Today. The default filter is the last few hours. Choosing All time under Delete activity by is the step people miss, and then they assume the clear-out failed.
• Leaving the product filter on Search. To clear everything, the filter must read All products. With Search selected you remove searches and nothing else.
• Clearing Chrome history instead of My Activity. chrome://history clears the local browsing log on that device only. Your account-level record is separate and needs the My Activity steps above.
• Expecting the wrong thing to disappear. Deleting activity is not account deletion. Your Gmail, Photos, Drive, YouTube channel and subscriptions all stay exactly as they are.
• Assuming YouTube history was cleared everywhere. Watch history in My Activity covers your Google account. A separate profile signed into the YouTube app, or activity on someone else’s device, is not included.
• Seeing entries reappear afterwards. Deletions sync across signed-in devices, so a phone that has not refreshed may briefly redisplay old entries. Pull to refresh on the app, or reopen the page.
• Watching entries vanish on their own. Entries can disappear from My Activity because of retention windows or account changes rather than anything you did. That is normal, and it is why the timeline occasionally feels unreliable.
• Hitting a locked screen on a managed account. If the delete option is greyed out and no confirmation appears, you are likely on a supervised, Family Link, or employer-managed account. The administrator controls the retention policy, and your only route is to ask them.

What deleting activity does not remove

Clearing My Activity is narrower than most people expect. It removes the record of what you did, and stops it being used for recommendations, ad targeting and Maps timelines going forward.

It does not delete your Gmail messages, your Google Photos library, your Drive files, your YouTube channel or any video you uploaded. It does not close your account, and it does not reset your ad personalisation settings, which are separate controls under Data & privacy. It does not clear the Chrome history stored on a device you are still using, and it does not reach anything already exported through Takeout or copied into a device backup.

It also does not make you invisible. Google retains some records for things like fraud prevention and legal requests, independent of your activity settings, and deleting your searches does not remove data an advertiser or a third-party site already holds about you. Reviewers on privacy forums are blunt about this: clearing history reduces what Google profiles going forward, it does not reach back and undo everything.

Two habits make the difference afterwards. Keeping Web & App Activity paused, with auto-delete set at 18 or 36 months, stops the record rebuilding itself while preserving enough context for useful results. And using incognito mode for anything you would rather Google never stored keeps private searches out of the timeline in the first place.

Frequently Asked Questions

Start with the account check, then run the five steps from myactivity.google.com with the range on All time and the filter on All products. Once it is done, set auto-delete to 18 months under Data and privacy so the record does not rebuild itself the same night. That is the whole of how to delete your Google activity history, and it takes less time than most people expect.