How to View My Computer's History

By Nick Peers

i Image courtesy of Mozilla

All major Web browsers -- Internet Explorer 11, Mozilla Firefox 36, Google Chrome 41 and Safari 5 -- save the Web browsing history. You can review the history at any time if you suspect someone has accessed potentially dangerous websites or if you can't remember the URL of a Web page you enjoyed in the past. You can organize the history, use the search feature to find specific items or delete specific Web pages.

Internet Explorer

Step 1

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Launch Internet Explorer and click the View favorites, feeds and history icon -- it looks like a star -- to display the Favorites pane. Alternatively, press Alt-C to bring up the pane. Then select the History tab to view the history.

Step 2

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Select one of the options in the Organize drop-down box to organize the history. You can choose from View by Date, View by Site, View by Most Visited and View by Order Visited Today.

Step 3

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Select Search History from the Organize box if you wish to search for a specific Web page. Type the search query into the Search for field and click Search Now to search the history.

Step 4

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To delete specific items from the history, right-click any page and select Delete from the menu. The item is deleted immediately.

Step 5

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To delete the entire Web history in Internet Explorer, click the gear icon, select Safety and click Delete browsing history. Alternatively, press Ctrl-Shift-Del.

Step 6

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Check only the History box in the Delete Browsing History dialog and then click Delete. The history is deleted permanently; you can't recover it after you confirm your action.

Mozilla Firefox

Step 1

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Click the Firefox Menu button and then click the History icon to display the History pane.

Step 2

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Click the Show All History button at the bottom of the History pane to open the Library window. The History tab is selected by default.

Step 3

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Select how much of the history you wish to see from the left pane -- Today, Yesterday, Last 7 days or This month. The Web pages are displayed in the right pane.

Step 4

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To search through the history, type the query into the Search field. To delete pages from the history, right-click an item and select the Delete This Page option.

Step 5

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Delete the entire history by pressing Ctrl-Shift-Delete to display the Clear All History dialog. Select only the Browsing and Download History box, select a time range from the Time range to clear drop-down box and click Clear Now. To delete the entire history, select Everything from the drop-down box.

Google Chrome

Step 1

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Click the Chrome Menu button and select History to open the Chrome History page. Alternatively, press Ctrl-H to open the page.

Step 2

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To search through the history, type the query into the Search field and then click Search History. To delete specific pages, check their boxes and then click the Remove selected items button.

To delete the entire history, click the Clear browsing data button.

Step 3

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Check only the Browsing History box to avoid deleting other data. Select the time range to clear from the Obliterate the following items from drop-down box. To delete the entire history, select The beginning of time from the drop-down box. Click the Clear browsing data button to erase the history.

Safari

Step 1

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Click the gear icon and select History from the menu to open the History section of the Collections page. Alternatively, press *Ctrl-H to view the history.

Step 2

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Search through the history by selecting the History option in the Search section and then typing the query into the Search field. The history is filtered as you type. To delete a specific page, right-click it and select Delete from the menu.