MacBook Pro will not delete ALL its history

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Level 1

13 points

MacBook Pro will not delete ALL its history

I'm doing some online Christmas shopping and don't want anyone in the family who shares this computer to see my online searches for their gifts. But when I went to delete my Safari history today, I noticed that it would not delete ALL the history despite my selecting the option to "clear all history". I also cannot delete the individual websites manually. What's even stranger is that there are several folders in History (8 different dates from the past month) that also will not delete. Some of the websites in those folders that will not delete are Yahoo mail, Facebook, Bing, Etsy, etc. Oddly enough, one of the dated folders has a date from Dec. 21, 2000 and I did not even own this MacBook until 2014 or so. Any advice on how I can get my MacBook to completely delete its history would be much appreciated. Thanks.

MacBook Pro Retina running MacOS Sierra Version 10.12.6/Safari Version 11.0)

Posted on Nov 28, 2017 5:11 PM

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Answer 1

Mac_slide

Level 3

623 points

Nov 28, 2017 7:17 PM in response to jla5762

Try enabling Developer and then go to that tab and delete caches.

Go to privacy under preferences and remove all website data.

There's also a website that describes how to remove the files from terminal: http://seanscus.blogspot.com/2012/08/completely-reset-safari.html

NOW, the 2000 date is interesting - and IN CASE the top two cache and website data clears don't work, and before you go there to terminal - maybe it's a broken ransomware that some one targeted you, try to hold SHIFT while opening safari and then CLEAR once more... if those don't work, you can delete safari and all it's files and reinstall OR go the terminal route and delete those files - your call.

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Answer 2

jla5762 Author

Level 1

13 points

Nov 30, 2017 5:10 PM in response to Mac_slide

Thank you for your reply. Unfortunately, "empty caches" (under Develop) didn't get rid of the sites that had been resistant to the "clear history" command. Nor did removing the website data under privacy in Safari preferences. Before taking the steps of removing files from the terminal or deleting Safari/reinstall, I decided to do some cleaning up and, on a whim, I ran CCleaner. As it turns out, CCleaner was able to get rid of all the history that I had previously been unable to delete (even the bizarre history folder that dated back to Dec. 21, 2000 which was before I even owned this MacBook). I appreciate you taking the time to try and help me out, Mac_slide.

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