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How to Stop Chrome Browser from Saving Browsing History

2 minutes
SecurityPrivacyBrowserChrome

Overview

This document outlines how to stop Google Chrome Browser from saving browsing history.

Introduction

While using Google's Chrome Browser, browsing history is saved automatically—even if you don’t want it to be. For security reasons, it's a good idea to regularly delete your browsing history and cookies, but this can be inconvenient, and some users may simply dislike having their history stored.

However, Chrome only provides an option to delete history, not to stop saving it. Therefore, a workaround is required to block Chrome from saving your browsing history.

How to Stop Saving Browsing History

Browsing history is stored in a file on your computer’s hard disk. To stop Chrome from saving history, you can change the file permissions to read-only, preventing Chrome from writing to the history file.

Locate the History File 🔍

Browsing history is saved in a file named History, located differently depending on your OS:

MacOS

~/<YourUsername>/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default

Windows

C:\Users\<YourUsername>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\History

Navigate to the respective location on your device.

Modify Permissions 👨‍🔧

MacOS

chmod 444 ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/Default/History
  • Sets the file mode to 444, meaning read-only.
chflags uchg ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/Default/History
  • Prevents Chrome from changing the file permissions or recreating the History file.

Windows
On Windows, use the GUI to set the file to read-only:

  1. Right-click the History file
  2. Click Properties
  3. Check the box labeled Read-only
  4. Click Apply

Final Thoughts

After the recent SKT SIM data leak incident, I became more cautious about personal data privacy and wanted to avoid even large companies like Google from storing my activity. While disabling history doesn't stop cookies or cache from being stored, it at least reduces traceability—and those should still be cleared periodically. Although I haven't explored them in detail, there also seem to be Chrome extensions that block history storage. If this method gets patched or stops working, exploring such extensions might be a viable alternative.