Clear History and Cache Older Than a Certain Amount of Time or Date

[Daniel909]

Hi

In Firefox Mobile and Firefox it would be useful to clear history and cache of websites visited that is older than a certain amount of time or before a specific date. For example, clear data that is older the 3 months, or older 6 months, or older than 14.04.22. At the moment you can only clear recent data or everything.

This would allow you to free space used up by cached files on websites that you are not visiting frequently or recently. This is particularly handy if your mobile device does not have much free storage, but you still want to benefit from reduced download time of having cached files from websites you visit regularly or websites you have visited recently and will look at again soon but will not likely visit again in the long term.

Thank you for upvoting this idea!

[Jeppie]

i would love to have this for multiple reasons.
1. it will take less data on device.
2. old/useless data is automatic gone.
3. you don't need to delete unnecessary data manually.
4. you don't lose your latest data.

[DebraB]

History is useful. (I was just reading something about that last week, now what was it?)

But having history stretch out for months is beyond annoying I really only need the last week and perhaps the last month. But as noted I can clear the last hour, day, ... or everything. So I clear everything, and then find myself trying to recreate something I should be able to look up in a moment.

[Tomalak]

I'd really like to see this feature, too.

@DebraBIt's important to make a distinction between "history" (list of URLs you visited) and "cache" (list of files you downloaded on those occasions). You can clean up the cache and still keep your history.

For files, especially for images, servers tend to define long cache lifespans, often a year or more. In image-heavy applications such as social media, those files build up over time, but you might rarely ever need them again after a couple of days, so keeping them around for that long will do nothing but clutter up your disk.

Having the option to dial down cache lifespans on a per-site basis would help keep wasted disk space at a minimum on sites that see heavy use and contain many large files.

[Jeppie]

@Jonis there any new update about this idea? It's been in review for a long time.

[Will-32]

I would love to see the feature. Brings some privacy with it. I always have to clear the cache out when a website has problems. why not clear the cache from the tab maybe instead of going to settings but also setting a timeframe to delete history and cache data at a specific timeframe?

[Jeppie]

  @Will-32 do you mean something like this?  https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/auto-cookie-delete-when-website-closes/idi-p/31759           

[Jeppie]

i think this 2 ideas need to be included when this idea is getting in development.

auto-cookie-delete-when-website-closes 

toggle-button-or-option-to-hide-recent-history-from-fixed 

[Jeppie]

       One more thing. I would say that this idea needs to be expanded with every option on this picture except the first option. And a extra feature for cookie with logins is don't delete it if you have been on the website before deleting time. like if you have it stays 7 days on your account. Monday you have been on youtube logged in with your account then the cookie will be deleted the next monday and then your logged out on your youtube account but if you use it sunday again so the day before the next monday it will be reset to the next sunday so you will stay logged in on that next monday and don't need to log in again. A extra option is exceptions for sites that don't delete cookies so you will stay logged in until you log out or manually delete cookies on firefox.       

 

[Thinking]

Option to Clear Just the Older History and Browsing Data

Firefox has an option to clear recent history and browsing data like for the last hour or such, but I did not find an option to clear only the older data without just clearing everything. Generally, links you may wish to revisit tend to be in the more recent history.

There should be an option to clear just the older history and browsing data, so, for example, you should be able to clear anything older than 30 days, or older than one year or such.

It would be nice if you could also set this to happen automatically. As Firefox is meant to be a more privacy oriented browser, I think this feature would fit quite well.

[Jon]

(Note: similar ideas have been merged into this thread)

[Geff]

I'm good now that someone pointed out the f9 option, at least on my pc. There are several things I haven't figured out on my android phone.............

[brixter]

I want this also. I don't need history older than 2 weeks.

I'm addicted to internet surfing and having the history persistently in my browser means I can easily look up and visit those websites I've gone to. I want them gone.

[brixter]

Android - Delete history after X days

I only need the last 2 weeks of history. Maximum up to 1 month. History older than that is just clutter. Please add a parameter to set how many days of history to keep. Housekeeping can be done once a week.

It makes the history more organized and improves Firefox' performance.

For Firefox desktop, there is already an add-on that does it (Perhaps this can be integrated in Firefox Desktop). We need the same functionality for Firefox Android.

[brixter]

This idea has been In Review for more than a year. This is my most requested idea among the In Review list.

To scope down the request, can Firefox at least delete History older than X days?

I'm fine if Firefox doesn't clear the cache because the History is more important to me. Thanks

[Jon]

Similar idea here: Clear History and Cache Older Than a Certain Amount of Time or Date