Delete Your YouTube Search History
Nobody phrases a search for an audience. It's the one thing you type when you assume nobody is reading, which is exactly what makes the saved list of them so revealing. YouTube keeps every one against your Google account and hands them back as suggestions the next time you touch the search box. Redact clears the list in bulk from your own machine.
Free for your last 30 days of comments & history.
Available on
Plan
Search History
Clear what you have typed into the search box
Thirty days, no charge
Whatever you typed in the past month clears for free. Older phrases are a Premium job.
Why clear your searches?
Searches are typed, not performed
A comment is written for other people and a like is a small public gesture. A search is neither, which is why the list of them says more about you than either. You also never signed up or asked Google to have all your searches saved and browsable.
It's the unguarded stuff
Symptoms, money worries, relationship questions and the things you'd never say out loud all go into that box exactly as you thought them, with no editing for an audience. Nobody expects to read them back.
It comes back as suggestions
Old searches are handed straight back to you in the dropdown. Anyone borrowing your device, or watching over your shoulder, gets a few characters of prompting away from your whole history in front of them.
It's on every signed-in screen
The suggestions follow the Google account, so what you typed on your phone at 2am turns up in the search box on the television in the front room. Signing out of one device doesn't take them with it.
Deleting them one by one is a chore
YouTube will remove a single suggestion if you know the keystroke, and it'll wipe the lot, but there's nothing in between. Clearing a year and keeping the rest is not something the interface offers.
What this feature does
Delete your entire search history, or just one stretch of it?
Everything you've ever typed into YouTube's search box sits in one long laundry list inside your Google account. Redact will load it and work it down removing specific items you want, or even wipe the whole thing entirely.
Want to keep part of your search history? The only thing you can aim at is when you typed it. Give Redact a first date, a last date, or just one of the two, and only that stretch gets deleted.
That's the whole toolkit, and there's a reason it's so short. A saved search is a handful of words with a timestamp. No video sits behind it and no title, so the word matching that narrows everything else here has nothing to grab hold of.
- Every phrase
- Date typed
- No word matching
- Look first
Try Redact for YouTube. Free for your last 30 days of comments & history.
Things to delete *
Select what you want to delete
Date range
Only delete searches from this window
Narrowing it down
One filter, and it's the date chooser
Search history hands you less to work with than anything else on YouTube. Once you see what a saved search actually is, that stops being surprising.
When you typed it
Every saved phrase carries a timestamp and Redact reads it. Name a first date, a last date, or one of them, and it takes that stretch.
Not what you typed
You would expect to match on the words themselves. You can't. Redact's word matching reads video titles, and no video sits behind a search.
Or none of the above
Skip the dates entirely and the list empties top to bottom, which is what brings most people to this page in the first place.
Run it your way
Have a look first with preview mode, or get to work with deletion mode.
Preview Mode
Nothing gets deleted. Redact pulls the phrases in range and puts them in front of you, which for most people is the first proper look at the list.
Select and Delete
Tick them off one by one. Slow going, but with no word matching on this page it's the only route to sparing a few and binning the rest.
Scheduled cleanups
Hand it to a timer. The same job reruns on whatever interval you name, so phrases drop off once they pass an age you set. Paid plans only.
Step-by-step guide
How to clear your YouTube search history with Redact
There's very little to configure here. One tick, an optional date window, done.
- 1
Download Redact for free
Download for your device →Install Redact on your computer and create a free account. YouTube cleanups run in the desktop app on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
- 2
Connect your Google account
Open Redact, choose YouTube, and sign in. The login goes straight to Google in a browser window Redact opens for you, and your password never touches a Redact server.
- 3
Tick Search History and set the dates
Select Search History under Content Types, then choose how much of the list to take.
- Date range: name the first and last day you want covered.
- Nothing set: every phrase saved against the account goes.
- Skip the keyword box. It reads video titles, and no video sits behind a search.
Good to know: the past month is free. Everything behind it wants Premium, which on a box you have been typing into since 2012 means almost the whole lot.
- 4
Preview the list
Preview it and read the result. Worth doing even when you intend to take everything, because hardly anyone has ever seen the full list laid out at once.
- 5
Clear it
Set it running and the phrases come off your Google account one by one. When it is finished the search box has nothing left to suggest back at you.
Nobody here reads your searches
The list is fetched and emptied by the copy of Redact running on your own machine, which speaks to Google directly. Not one phrase you typed is ever sent to us, and neither is the fact that you cleared it. Break the account link the moment you're finished. Redact is an independent product with no tie to YouTube or Google.
Try Redact for Free
We are frequently adding support to other social network services. You can receive direct updates from us in Redact's Discord Channel.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. The suggestions in the search box are drawn from the saved list, so once the list is cleared there's nothing left to suggest back to you.
Yes. Put a boundary either side of the year and only phrases typed inside it are queued. A search remembers the day you typed it, so nothing outside that stretch is touched.
Because the keyword box matches the title of a video, and a search is a phrase you typed rather than a video. There's nothing for it to match against here, so this run is scoped by date. Watch history does carry titles, so the filter works there.
No. Two separate ticks, two separate runs. To clear what you actually played as well, head for watch history, which most people do in the same sitting.
No. Pausing stops new phrases being saved from now on and leaves the existing list untouched. This clears what's already there. Do both if you want the box to stay empty.
More YouTube features
Delete Your YouTube Playlists
Tick the playlists you're done with and Redact deletes the ones you made and unsaves the ones you'd only added to your library.
Clear Out Your Watch Later Queue
Empty a queue that's hundreds deep in one run, or clear only part of it by matching words in the video titles.
Delete Your Liked Videos
Un-like your whole liked videos list in one run, or aim it at a topic with a title keyword.
Delete All Your YouTube Comments
Clear your whole comment history, or aim at it with a date range, the words in the comment, or the video it sits under.
Delete Your YouTube Watch History
Clear the record of everything you've played, all of it, a date window, or every video whose title matches a word.
Mass Unsubscribe From Channels
Reset a subscription list built over years in one run, instead of unsubscribing channel by channel.
Delete Your Uploaded Videos
Pick old uploads out of your channel's own list and delete them in bulk. Permanent, so preview it first.