How To Delete Your Gmail Search History Online & On Your Phone

Gmail is easily among the most useful email applications around. Not only does the service do a great job of filtering out spam, learning over time. It also has plenty of sorting and organizational features, as well as snoozing, filtering, automated forwarding, and more. But, while those are all useful, one of the most helpful features is the Gmail search and search history feature. But that doesn’t mean you’ll never want to delete the search history in Gmail.

There is a number of reasons for doing so. Whether that’s because a search term was — or search terms were — entered incorrectly and is now taking up too much space in the automatic suggestions during a search. Or because there are too many searches that have been performed, to begin with.

Regardless of the reason, this guide is here to help.

Here’s how to delete your Gmail search history on your phone

Now, chances are, you’re like most people when it comes to Gmail. Namely, you likely use the service on your mobile device or tablet. So this first segment will cover how to delete your Gmail search history from there.

Go ahead and skip to the next segment if you need to delete your email search history from a browser or the web otherwise. Or if you’re looking to remove your search history one item at a time. Deleting the search history on a phone deletes the entire history.

1. Open up the Gmail app
2. Tap or click on the three-dash menu at the top left-hand side of the UI
3. Scroll down to “Settings” and select that option, at which point this guide will split for iOS and Android slightly. It’s worth noting that our example images follow the Android process

For iOS

1. Select the email address you’d like to learn how to delete Gmail history for
2. Scroll down again to the “Privacy” subheader and select “Clear search history”
3. The resulting menu will highlight that continuing to clear history will remove the history across all devices for the Gmail service. Select “Clear” to confirm your decision
4. Your search history will now be cleared

For Android

1. In the Settings menu for Gmail, tap to select “General Settings”
2. Now, select the three-dot overflow menu found at the top right-hand corner of the UI
3. Select “Clear search history”
4. The system will warn you that choosing to continue will remove all previous searches performed. Select “Clear” to confirm the history deletion
5. Your search history in Gmail will now be removed

 Here’s how to do it on the web

For those looking at how to delete their Gmail search history online, conversely, that’s also easy enough. Although it is just a bit more of a manual process. In any case, the following guide will help you accomplish just that task.

1. Open up your browser and navigate to Gmail.com
2. At the top of the page, tap or click on the search bar. If you’re looking for a specific search term to delete, start typing the term. As you type, various auto-suggestions should begin appearing in the space below the search field. With the feature tucked in its own card UI. Otherwise, your most recent search terms should automatically populate the field
3. Find the search term you’d like to remove. In this case, in our sample photos, we’re removing the search term for “house of Marley”
4. Hover your mouse over the search term you’d like to delete.
5. At the right-hand side of the search results field, an “x” will appear next to whichever search term your mouse is hovering over
6. Tap or click the “x” to delete the search term
7. Repeat for any additional search terms you’d like to remove from your Gmail search history

For touchscreen devices in the web Gmail interface, here’s how to delete search history

Now if you’re learning how to delete search history in Gmail on a touchscreen gadget online, rather than in-app, the process will be different. As is often the case with how-to guides. Namely, because the “x” button indicated above isn’t going to appear. That is, not unless you’re using a mouse and hovering over the search term you’d like to delete.

So, if you’re on a touchscreen-enabled device, the exact steps above won’t work for you. Instead, you’ll need to follow the steps above until you reach step 4. Then, instead of following step four, you’ll need to tap the empty space to the far right of the search term you’d like to delete. No “x” icon will appear but, tapped properly, the search term itself will be deleted.