Cortana search history is a collection of all the searches you perform. It’s easy to delete your Cortana search history, should it become cluttered or if you simply want to protect your privacy.
What does Cortana search history do? Cortana search feature tracks what you’ve looked for recently, which is great for helping you get back to pages or links you visit frequently. The data in most cases get used for purposes not known to the users, but you can control what Cortana saves by deleting your search history manually from the website.
Meanwhile, the Cortana search history or activity is not available to view by other users, but the site uses the information to give you suggestions.
How to Delete Cortana Search History on Computer
Deleting your Cortana search history is important if you don’t want your information to be used for a purpose unknown to you. It’s good to clear your search activity when you perform numerous searches over time with many entries.
Use the steps below to maintain some privacy by removing your search history.
1. Launch a browser and log into your Cortana account.
2. Click on your profile name in the upper-right corner of the homepage.
3. Click the “Account” option, this takes you to the next tab.
4. On your account page, scroll down to “Privacy And Settings” on the right-hand side.
5. On the next page, under the “Manage Activity” section and then click “Clear Activity”.
You can delete individual Cortana searches instead of clearing searches all at one time. Find your searches in the search history list. The most recent searches are at the top. Click on the three dots by the right side and select delete.
How to Clear/Delete Cortana Search History Using the App
To clear your Cortana search history using the app for iOS or Android:
1. Open the Cortana app on your device and sign in to your account.
2. On an iOS device, select your account profile icon in the upper-right corner of the screen. On an Android device, select the menu icon represented by three vertical dots.
3. On the next tab, select “Settings”.
4. Scroll down or select Clear search history in the “History & Privacy” section.
Can’t Delete My Cortana Search History
If the problem persists, maybe the temporary files associated with previous Cortana sessions are the cause. Try clearing your app cache and data and check the results.
To clear app cache:
1. Open your phone and go to “Settings”.
2. Select “Apps”, and select Cortana.
3. Go to Storage and tap the “Clear cache” button.
Your Cortana search history is now cleared and nothing appears when you open the search bar unless you only deleted specific searches.
How to See Cortana History
1. Go to Cortana and log in with your username and password.
2. Go to the search bar at the top of the page and click on “Settings”.
3. Click on “Manage Searches. You’ll see a list of all of your searches here.
However, if you use a browser to access Cortana you may still need to delete your search activities from that browser.
How to Delete Cortana Search History from Chrome
1. Open Chrome on your computer or phone.
2. Click “More” at the top right of the page.
3. Click “History”.
4. Search for Cortana history in the search bar.
5. From the drop-down menu, select how much history you want to delete.
6. Tick the boxes for the data that you want Chrome to clear, including browsing history.
7. Click “Clear data”.
Note: When you clear your Cortana browser history, you’re only deleting the history that’s locally stored on your device. Clearing your browser activities doesn’t change anything to the data stored on Google’s servers.
Cortana Search History Disappeared
When your search history disappears, click the browsing History link at the top of the main page to see the recent searches you previously viewed while clicking around on the site. At the top of the page, click Activities. Here, you can click the button to enable or disable your browsing history Cortana.
How to Download Your Cortana Data and History
All Cortana users are able to generate the data download via their General Account Settings. You can do this via your computer browser or mobile browser.
1. Log in to your Cortana account
2. Click on “Settings & Privacy” from the menu.
3. Click on “Manage Activity”.
4. Select download and Click the calendar bar to adjust the dates.
5. Click “Download” to receive your CSV file.
Note that the generated download link will only be stored for a few days. Download it as soon as possible else it will disappear.
Cortana allows you to clear your search activities all at once, as well as delete individual search items and you can delete search activities on both a computer or a mobile device with just a few clicks or taps.
Conclusion
Cortana search history is a list of relevant predicted results for your search query based on popular searches on Cortana. You can delete your search activities if you don’t want them to cluster in your account or be used for an unspecified purpose. Clearing search history is also a way to free memory space on your device.