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How to delete and pause your YouTube watch history

Google tracks the videos you watch to provide a handy list so you can return to videos you enjoyed previously. Learn how to delete your history and prevent it from continuing to track your viewing habits.

Matt Elliott Senior Editor
Matt Elliott is a senior editor at CNET with a focus on laptops and streaming services. Matt has more than 20 years of experience testing and reviewing laptops. He has worked for CNET in New York and San Francisco and now lives in New Hampshire. When he's not writing about laptops, Matt likes to play and watch sports. He loves to play tennis and hates the number of streaming services he has to subscribe to in order to watch the various sports he wants to watch.
Expertise Laptops, desktops, all-in-one PCs, streaming devices, streaming platforms
Matt Elliott

It seems that with its recent Google+ update, YouTube has taken its finger off of the pause button on your watch history. YouTube tracks the videos you watch, providing a convenient list should you want to return to a video you vaguely recall watching in the past. If you had this feature paused before YouTube's update this month, your watch history is once again rolling.

Your watch history is viewable only from your account, but that doesn't mean a friend using your computer couldn't accidentally discover your LOLcats obsession. Thus, now is a good time to review your watch history management options.

Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET

To view your YouTube watch history, click on the History link in the upper-left menu. You can delete your entire history by clicking the Clear all watch history button at the top of the list. And you can stop YouTube from adding to the list by clicking Pause watch history. You can also remove particularly embarrassing videos by selecting the check boxes next to them, and then clicking Remove.

Meanwhile, if you are not happy with Google's change to YouTube's comment system, there are ways to combat it.

(Thanks toKevin Du via Twitter.)