Why Safari’s “Clear Recent Searches” is Gone

Posted on September 22, 2009
Filed Under Review | 3 Comments

Just today, it was brought to my attention that the “Clear Recent Searches” option was removed from Safari in version 4.0.3. This seemed crazy to me so I started to poke around the net. To my surprise, there were many users complaining about the removed functionality. Some users brushed it off as a ‘bug’, one reported it as ‘by design’, but no one explained why. Then it hit me.

If you’re one of the lucky ones to have Safari 4.0 (beta) still hanging around or a copy of 3.0, follow along with me:

  1. Do a search in Safari. You’ll notice that clicking the arrow in the query box will show you a list of all the recent searches you’ve performed as well as an option to clear that list.
  2. Next, let’s take a trip over to your browser history. If you’re using 4.0 (beta), you’ll be able to do a search for the same terms. In the results you will find the Google search results page you just opened in our last step.
  3. Finally, clear your searches using the “Clear Recent Searches” option in the Google field.
  4. Perform that same history search as in step 2. The results are the same aren’t they?

When you cleared your recent searches, all you were doing was clearing the list of search terms in the Google field… not the actual searches. This provides a false sense of security which is NOT good. By removing the “Clear Recent Searches” option, Apple is forcing users to use “History > Clear History” instead; resulting in what the user would expect. While this upsets some users who would like to simply clear that list, it helps those whose intentions were to leave no trace of their searches at all.

Personally, I never clear anything (history, search terms, etc). It’s there for a reason. It’s my collective computer-related memory (for those who know me, my conventional memory is shoddy at best). If I lose that, I don’t have much else to go by… This was a good move by Apple, it will just take some getting used to.

Comments

3 Responses to “Why Safari’s “Clear Recent Searches” is Gone”

  1. Jay on October 7th, 2009 1:41 am

    I was googling through this issue and came across this terminal command that seems to just remove the recent searches:
    defaults delete com.apple.safari RecentSearchStrings

  2. Celia on October 20th, 2009 12:19 am

    Only if there’s a feature to clear the RecentSearchStrings string AND the Google search results pages from the history…

  3. Lance on January 15th, 2010 2:47 am

    Not sure what you are talking about. My Safari 4.0.4 has “Clear recent searches” in the Google field.

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