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Will deleting history free up space?

Question:

How do I delete my history and if I delete the history, will that free up
space?

In this excerpt from
Answercast #90
I look at the amount of disk space that can be retrieved
from deleting various types of history.

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Deleting history to free up space

Well, it depends on exactly what history you mean.

  • There’s your document history;

  • Your browser history;

  • Your form history.

There’s any number of different kinds of history that are kept on your computer.

There are also histories that are kept elsewhere. Like, your search history might be kept by Google if you’re logged into a Google account and so forth and so on.

So, I can’t really say how to delete your history because it depends very specifically on what history you’re talking about, and what programs might be involved in maintaining that history.

Not much disk space

What I can say is that, no. When you delete history, you’re not really deleting any appreciable amount of data. The amount of data that history is kept in is typically very, very small.

Yes, you’ll free up some; you might free up a megabyte or so.

It depends on, again, which programs we’re talking about and what kind of history we’re talking about. But, typically, we’re talking about very small amounts of data in comparison to things like the size of your hard drive.

So if you’re looking to free up space, deleting your history is not something that’s going to help in any significant manner.

(Transcript lightly edited for readability.)

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2 comments on “Will deleting history free up space?”

  1. You say that you might free up a mb by deleting your history.
    Is this a mb for the whole of your ‘my Google Activity ‘ or just part of that you don’t need storing?
    I regularly spend time going in and deleting stuff, so am I just wasting my time doing it?
    I have an old phone with a small storage amount and I think it’s maybe an android 4, so cannot very often download apps as generally need a higher android number.
    I am scared that if I do manage to do what is classed as a ‘cleanup tool’ that it will erase stuff I’ve not used for years, but still want to keep, would this happen?
    Looking forward to hearing from you and thanks for your information in advance.

    Reply

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