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How to turn off Facebook’s web browser history

In This Article

In This Article

Whenever you open a link from the Facebook app, Meta uses cookies to improve performance, personalise content, and tailor ads.

Keep reading to learn how to clear your cookies and cache in the Facebook Mobile Browser, or scroll to the bottom of this guide for steps to clear your Facebook search history and erase activity tracked outside of Meta’s apps and services.

What you’ll need

What you’ll need

The Short Version

How to turn off Facebook’s web browser history

Step1

Open the Facebook app

The following steps will work in the iOS and Android apps.

Step2

This will take you to Facebook’s Mobile Browser. Make sure to click a link you trust from a person or page you trust on your timeline. Alternatively, you can find your Browser Settings in the Facebook mobile app by heading to the Settings section.

Step3

Tap the three dots in the corner

This will bring up a dropdown menu with more options.

Step4

Select Go To Settings

This will take you to your Facebook Mobile Browser Settings.

Step5

Tap Clear next to Your Browsing Data

This will clear your phone’s cookies and cache from any websites you’ve visited in the Facebook Mobile Browser. You can also switch off your Link History at this stage (if the feature is available to you) to prevent Meta from using this data to personalise ads.

Troubleshooting

To erase your search history within the Facebook app, including all the people and pages you’ve looked up using Facebook’s built-in search tool, you’ll need to head into the Meta Accounts Centre. You can access this via your Facebook or Instagram settings. Just click Search History and then Clear All Searches.

Meta also tracks information shared with them from other apps. In our case, this included apps like Deliveroo and ASOS. To erase this data, head into your Meta Accounts Centre and tap Clear Previous Activity. You can also prevent Meta from gathering any future data by tapping Manage Future Activity and selecting Disconnect Future Activity.

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Hannah joined Trusted Reviews as a staff writer in 2019 after graduating with a degree in English from Royal Holloway, University of London. She’s also worked and studied in the US, holding positions …

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Why trust our journalism?

Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.

Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.

Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.

We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.