How do I clear my YouTube search suggestions?

Last reviewed: October 14, 2026 · Markdown version

Clear your YouTube search history, and the suggestions built from it go with it. YouTube's help puts it in one line: “After clearing your search history, your past searches won’t show as suggestions in the search box” (YouTube Help: View or delete your YouTube search history (Android), read 14 October 2026). This page is about that search box. The videos YouTube recommends on Home are a separate system with separate controls, covered on how to reset your YouTube recommendations.

Remove one search you regret

In the YouTube app (YouTube Help: View or delete your YouTube search history (Android), read 14 October 2026):

Tap your profile photo.
Tap Settings, then Manage all history.
Tap the delete icon beside the search you want gone. Search and Calendar on the same screen help you find an old one.

The iPhone version of the page gives the same route under the heading “Delete individual searches” (YouTube Help: View or delete your YouTube search history (iPhone), read 14 October 2026). Neither version describes removing a suggestion directly from the drop-down under the search box, so we are not describing that here.

Clear many at once, and what else goes

The same screen has DELETE for removing more than one search at a time. Read the note under it first: “Using DELETE to delete your search history will also delete your watch history from the selected time frame.” A bulk clear of searches also clears what you watched in that window, and watch history is what YouTube uses for recommendations. If you want to keep those, delete searches one by one instead.

On a computer

Go to the My Activity page, where YouTube offers the same Delete, Search and Calendar options, and the same warning about watch history. The computer page adds an automatic version: “You can choose to have YouTube automatically delete your search history after 3, 18, or 36 months” (YouTube Help: View or delete your YouTube search history (computer), read 14 October 2026).

Stop new suggestions building up

Two options from the Android page cited above:

Pause it. Settings, Manage all history, the Controls tab, then unselect “Include your searches on YouTube.” YouTube: “While your search history is paused, searches you enter won’t be saved in your search history.”
Search in Incognito. “If you browse in Incognito mode, your search history won’t be saved.”

One side effect YouTube states, in your favour if that was the goal: “Search entries you delete will no longer influence your recommendations.”

On a TV

On smart TVs, streaming devices and consoles, YouTube's recommendations page names a shelf on the search screen, “Top channels you watch”, and clears it through the left menu: Settings, then Clear search history, then confirm (YouTube Help: Manage your recommendations & search results, read 14 October 2026).

Suggestions you never typed

Clearing your history removes your past searches from the box. The search-history pages cited above (YouTube Help: View or delete your YouTube search history (Android), read 14 October 2026) only describe suggestions made from what you searched before. They say nothing about any other suggestion that appears as you type, or how one would be chosen, so neither do we. If words you never searched for still show up after a clear, the help we read does not explain them.