There are many benefits to keeping your browser history and data cleared. The obvious one is that you can keep websites that you have visited from appearing in your history. Of course, there are the more fundamental benefits too. As browsers essentially record pretty much everywhere you visit, use cookies, plugin data, passwords, autofill data and so on, keeping your history and data clear can keep your browser running a little better and faster. Spring cleaning so to speak.
For those who make use of a Chrome browser, this is a rather easy thing to do. Head to Chrome’s settings, head to ‘show advanced settings’, then to ‘clear browsing data’ and then of course, clear any of the specific aspects that you want to clean. While this is universally the way it works across Chrome on all devices, there are some notable differences between desktop and mobile Chrome. The biggest being that from your desktop, you can choose when you clear data from. If you just want to erase the last hour, you can. Likewise, you can for just today, this week or for all of eternity. On mobile however, that is not exactly the case. Yes, you can clear your browsing history, but you cannot really define the time-parameters. Although, if you are running the developer version of Chrome, then it now looks as though you can.
It seems Chrome Dev has been updated with essentially the same time choices for clearing data as you’ll find on desktop Chrome. By heading into settings, down to ‘clear browsing history’, the same screen now appears as on the normal Chrome for Android, however, on Chrome Dev, it also now offers a drop-down menu which allows you to pick the time-frame for clearing. Similar to desktop, the drop down menu offers clearing for the past hour, past day, week, four week and the beginning of time. The update has taken effect and if you are running the latest version of Chrome Dev, then it should be now accessible on your device. Those who opt to make use of the normal version of Chrome for Android (and Chrome Beta), it would be presumed this is likely to be a feature which will eventually head your way, although when will be the question as Chrome Dev does receive these features much sooner than the Beta and normal versions. For reference, you can see how the new drop-down menu looks in the image below.