Some users may want to delete YouTube from time to time to stop getting recommendations for specific videos topics or music genres. That’s because YouTube stores users’ search, watch and even comment history to understand what users like and to start recommending similar videos. It may be helpful to most users, but it may not be so pleasant to others, as YouTube may still recommend videos related to topics that are no longer of interest.

YouTube has more than two billion monthly users, and it’s the most prominent video platform out there. Moreover, the Google-owned platform is continuously rolling new features, like the PiP feature on the iOS YouTube app and more. Millions of users visit YouTube daily to browse millions of videos. That’s why it’s essential to refine and adjust its settings for the best results. Deleting YouTube search and watch history could be a helpful method to refresh the experience on the platform.

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Some users may delete YouTube search and watch history not to stop recommendations but to improve privacy using YouTube, especially when using the platform on a family device. Deleting YouTube history will remove the data of the videos watched or searched for. For example, if a user has watched a video repeatedly, this will delete the whole history, not just the last record. However, this process will still leave subscribed-to channels intact, as well as liked or disliked videos on YouTube.

Deleting YouTube Watch & Search History

YouTube allows its users to delete both watch and search history from every operating system available, and there are two main methods to do so. The first method is to delete a specific video or search term. This will stop any recommendations related to it and hide them from the search history on every device. The second method is to delete the whole YouTube search history. On an Android device, the user should click on the profile icon in the up-right corner, then navigate to ‘Settings‘ from the settings main page, tap on the ‘History and privacy‘ option,

On this page, YouTube offers a wide selection of related history, and the user could choose between the ‘Clear watch history‘ option, which clears the entire watch history, and the ‘Clear search history,’ which does the same. Also, there are options to ‘Pause watch history‘ and ‘Pause search history.’ Users could enable those just before searching and watching content they don’t want to save in YouTube history. Finally, it’s worth noting that users could use YouTube’s Restricted Mode to filter out mature content.

The process is almost the same on iPhone and iPad devices. Users should click on the profile icon to navigate to ‘Settings‘ and then ‘History and privacy‘ to find the same options discussed above. Lastly, users could also delete watch and search history through the Web app. The first step is to open the YouTube website, navigate to the options menu from the top-left three horizontal lines icon, then click on the ‘History‘ option. From there, the users could delete a single video or multiple videos one by one. To remove the watch history altogether, the user should click on the ‘Clear watching history‘ link on the right while there’s an option on the same page to clear the search history. Also, users could delete individual search terms on every device by clicking on the ‘Remove‘ option next to the search term on the web or the ‘X‘ icon on Android, iOS, and iPadOS.