It’s easy to clear Safari cache, history and cookies on your iPhone and iPad. This comes in handy when you want to delete some sensitive browsing information, in case you did not use Private Mode. Moreover, it can also help free up some space to keep your browser running efficiently. If Safari is being slow or behaving erratically, you can get rid of data to clear out the load. So let’s see what’s involved.
- What Happens When You Clear Safari History and Website Data?
- How to Delete Specific Pages from Safari History
- How to Delete Safari History and Cookies on iPhone and iPad
- How to Block Safari Cookies on iPhone and iPad
- How to Remove Website Data from Safari on iPhone and iPad
What Happens When You Clear Safari History and Website Data?
Clearing your Safari browsing history and website data erases the record of all the webpages you had visited within the selected period. You will also be logged out of certain websites and may need to log in again. However, it does not affect your AutoFill data saved in Safari.
How to Delete Specific Pages from Safari History
If you only want to get rid of some particular pages from your browsing history or delete the record of webpages visited within a specific time frame, here’s what to do:
- Open Safari on your iPhone → Tap on the Bookmark icon. On iPad, it is at the top left
- Now, tap on the clock icon on the right. (In older iOS versions, History will be near the top of your bookmarks list.)
- You should see the name of the websites you have visited. Now, you have primarily two options:
- Swipe left from right on the name of the page that you want to remove, and then tap on Delete.
- If you wish to clear entire history at once, then tap on Clear at the bottom right corner. Next, choose the appropriate option from the four available:
- The Last Hour: To clean up all the history of the last hour
- Today: To clean all the history of today
- Today & Yesterday: To remove all the history of today and yesterday
- All Time: To delete the entire history at once.
- Open Settings → Scroll down and tap on Safari.
- Now, tap on “Clear History and Website Data.”
- Tap again to Confirm.
If you do not want any cookies on your browser, here’s how you can block them from all websites.
- Go to Settings → Tap on Safari.
- Under Privacy & Security, toggle ON the switch next to Block All Cookies.
- Tap Block All to confirm it.
Though, certain websites need cookies to function, so you may need to undo this option if you run into problems when browsing.
How to Remove Website Data from Safari on iPhone and iPad
In case you want to keep your browsing history but get rid of website data, here’s what to do:
- Open the Settings app → Scroll down and tap on Safari.
- Scroll down again and tap on Advanced.
- Up next, tap on Website Data.
- Now, you have two options:
- If you want to clean up the entire Website Data, you can do so by tapping on Remove All Website Data → tap Remove Now to confirm.
- If you want to remove individual website data, simply swipe left on any website name → tap on Delete.
- Alternately, tap on Edit from the top right corner → tap on the red button next to a website data you want to remove → tap on Delete → tap on Done at the top right corner to confirm.
Summing Up
Clearing your Safari browsing history and data on one device will also delete it from all of your other devices only if they have Safari enabled in iCloud preferences. It’s a good practice to periodically remove Safari browsing history and data to keep things running smoothly on your iPhone or iPad. To clear more space, you should also delete Safari offline reading list cache.
