Our browsers have grown over time, and one of the features that improve user experience is autocomplete. The feature is seen on address bars and automatic completion of forms. The tool means that a user does not have to type an entire web address or repeatedly fill a form with personal information as the browser stores that data in cache.
We have come accustomed to this feature because it genuinely useful. However, there are cases where autocomplete takes you to a site you don’t want to access at that time. Of course, you can edit out the autocompleted address, but it will keep popping up in future use cases. This drives some people crazy, including yours truly.
There are cases where you lend out your computer to a friend or family, and they populate you cache with search terms and addresses that you are interested in. It wouldn’t be a bother if they used incognito mode, which does not store such information locally (but your ISP and Big Brother will still monitor traffic).
We should also note that we are talking about autocomplete as a prediction and not a suggestion because the feature is designed to help you complete a search you are intending to do, and not suggest new types of searches to be performed.
On the bright side of things, this problem can be dealt with a few steps, and this is how you do it:
- Open Google Chrome.
- Hit CTLR + SHIFT + DELETE to summon the Clear Browsing Data menu.
- You will see a box for browsing history, download history, cookies and other sites data, cached images and files, passwords and auto-fill form data.
- Since you want to clear autocomplete data, you only need to select browsing history and leave the rest unchecked.
- You may also need to specify the time range, like four weeks or the entire history.
- Click clear data.
- Done
If you want to delete other forms of history, you can do so. Personally, I wouldn’t do that because I depend on Chrome for these features, and I use them daily.
The idea here is that if you visit some not-family-friendly sites, you can do so and clear that data easily. If this is a lot of work, just use Incognito mode.
