Google Adds Feature to Delete Web and App Activity for Last 15 Minutes on iOS, Android Support Coming Later

Google app on iOS and Android has an auto-delete option where you can choose how often you want search history to be deleted.

By Vineet Washington | Updated: 16 July 2021 12:20 IST

Google Adds Feature to Delete Web and App Activity for Last 15 Minutes on iOS, Android Support Coming Later

Google announced this feature at Google I/O

Highlights

Google app on Android to get ‘delete last 15 mins’ later this year
Google app has an auto-delete feature for Web and app activity
You can manually delete your saved activity at any time

Google has rolled out its new privacy feature that lets users quickly delete their last 15 minutes of saved search history. The feature is available in the Google app on iOS and will come to Android devices later this year. The feature was first announced at Google I/O in May and is now making its way to iOS devices. This is useful in case you share your device with other people and don't want to go into settings to manually delete history. The Google app can also clear search activity every 3,18, or 36 months, if the option is turned on.

In a recent blog post, Google shared is has rolled out a new privacy option for Google app on iOS. This brings a ‘Delete last 15 mins' option in the app that lets you quickly clear your Web and app activity history for the last 15 minutes in case you need to share your device with someone else. The option can be found in the Google app on iOS when you tap on your profile. Google also offers an incognito mode for searching and an auto-delete feature, but this new option makes things a bit simpler.

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As of now, this feature is only available on iOS and Android users will get it later this year. We were able to spot the shortcut on Google app version 167.0.382489606.

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For those unaware, Google lets you turn on or off saving Web and app activity on Google sites and apps on both iOS and Android. If you have this feature turned on, there is an auto-delete feature that gives you three options — 3 months, 18 months, and 36 months. This means the search history will be cleared every 3, 18, or 36 months. By default, it is set to 18 months, but you can change it by heading to the Google app, tapping on your profile icon and then Search history. Here you should see the Auto-delete feature wherein you can select the duration. Regardless of the auto-delete feature, you can manually delete your Web and app activity at any time.

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