/ How can I clear recently viewed URLs from my computer’s memory?

How can I clear recently viewed URLs from my computer’s memory?

Kate Dubensky URL, pronounced “earl,” is the abbreviation for Uniform Resource Locator, which refers to a website or document’s address on the web. Within the URL there is information about the protocol type, the resource name and the domain name where the particular data is located. Basically, URLs are website and resource online addresses.

When you visit a website a record of the URL is saved in the address bar. If you go to your address bar, you can delete the address of this web page that you are currently reading and enter a random letter of the alphabet. You will see a list of website addresses drop down, listed by URL, that begin with that letter. For reasons of privacy and security, you might not want other users of your computer to see the websites that you have visited. To prevent this from happening, you can delete the URL history from your system.

In a few simple steps you can remove your URL browsing history. Using a Windows operating system, go to your Start menu, then select My computer, then Control Panel, then Internet Options. Select the tab titled General, then Browsing History, and then Delete.

If you use a Mozilla Firefox browser it is even easier to clear your URL history, and it is easy to remove individual entries without deleting the entire contents. Open either the list that drops down from the address bar or the history sidebar list. Select and highlight the URL that you want to remove and press Shift and Delete at the same time. That’s it.

When URLs are recorded in your address bar, your computer makes a corresponding registry key in the registry. So, even if you remove the history from your address bar, the information is still stored on your computer and can still be accessed. To remove your URL history from the registry a manual edit is required. Adjusting your registry is a potentially dangerous task and mistakes could mean that you have to start from scratch and reinstall your operating system. Now that you’ve been warned, and since you have already created a back up of your registry settings in case of emergency, you can go ahead and edit the registry if you still want to.

Open your Start menu and then choose Run. In the Search bar, type regedit and press Enter. The Windows registry will open and you should look for the registry key that corresponds to your browser. If you use Internet Explorer the registry key will read:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER → Software → Microsoft → Internet Explorer.

Next, select TypedUrls and you will see a list of all your saved URLs. The entry at the top of the list, called Default should not be removed, but you can delete the rest of the history.