Look, we get it. It was late at night and you had a couple of beers—it was just you and your computer. Everyone allows their id to run wild and explore the virtual world on occasion. But now there's a digital record of all those things you looked up online and it's all available to anyone with access to your device.
First, let's be clear about the situation: unless you tell it to do otherwise, your trusty browser will keep a very detailed list of all your Internetting—including all those weird, crazy, unspoken things that you would never discuss with your co-workers or loved ones.
It's probably a good idea to clear the record of these potentially embarrassing explorations before you find that they've been inadvertently shared with the world. And we're not just talking about all those p0rnog searches—you probably don't want people knowing that you were looking up information about medical concerns, emotional problems, or controversial political opinions.
One way to proactively avoid any issues is by setting your browser to not record your surfing behavior (try conducting these searches in a non-record-keeping "private window" in Firefox and Safari, AKA an "incognito window" as it's known in Chrome, or in an "inPrivate" window in Internet Explorer). But if you neglected to proactively take yourself off the record (say in the aforementioned "couple of beers" scenario), here's how you can clean up your digital history.
Note, the websites you visit may keep a record of your visit; the list below will only clean up the record on your local system. Click here to see which browser got the title for PCMag's favorite.
Chrome
Click the three lines in the top-right corner and select "History" from the pull-down menu (or conversely, just click Ctrl-H on a PC). This will prompt a new tab where you'll find a long list of your recent Web visits. You can remove individual visits by checking the box next to each entry and then clicking "Remove selected items."
If you want to clean a wider swathe of your history (for example a whole day's worth of browsing), click the "Clear browsing data…" button at the top of the History screen to prompt a pop-up window. Make sure the box next to "Browsing history" is clicked, in addition to any other type of information you'd like to delete (e.g. cookies, cached images, downloads). The pull-down menu at the top will give you the option to delete the materials for a certain period (e.g. past hour, past day, past week, or since the beginning of time). Then just click "Clear browsing data" at the bottom and your history will be expunged.
In the Chrome mobile app, tap the three dots (or sometimes three lines) in the top-right corner and click the "CLEAR BROWSING DATA" button at the bottom of the screen.
Firefox
Click the three lines in the top-right corner and choose History > Clear Recent History (or on a PC, just click Ctrl-Shift-De). This will prompt the "Recent History Box" to pop up. Here, you'll find a pull-down menu with time range options to clear that spans from "Last Hour" to "Everything." If you click the details button you will see the various types of data you can try to delete (browsing history, cache, etc.). Choose the ones you would like to obliterate and then click "Clear Now."
Internet Explorer
Click the little gear in the corner and select Safety > Delete browsing history (or alternatively, click Ctrl-Shift-Del). The prompted pop-up screen only gives you the option to delete your browsing history en masse—i.e. there's no way to just delete smaller spans of time such as the past hour or past day. Click the boxes next to the types of information you would like to delete, and then click the "Delete" button at the bottom.
Safari
For Mac users only. Click on the Safari menu and choose "Clear History and Website Data" to prompt a pop-up. Here, you will only have the ability to delete all your information in one fell swoop (you can't, for example, parse out just downloads or cache). There is, however, a pull-down menu which will allow you to delete your information over different ranges of time.
On iOS, click the bookmarks icon to the left of the navigation bar, select History, and then Clear at the bottom of the screen. This will give you the option to clear your history over a certain amount of time.
Beyond the Browser
If you really want to clean up your virtual trail, you will need to sweep up more than just your local browser. Just because your search history is off your system, it's still up there in the cloud. For example, whether you know it or not, Google keeps a very detailed online diary of everything you do while logged into its Web services (even if you're just logged into your Gmail account). Just go to google.com/history to check it out. If you see anything you'd like to delete, click the box next to any offending queries and then click the "Remove items" button at the top. (*Poof*) If you happen to be one of those weirdos who "Bings it," you can find your history over at bing.com/profile/history.