Delete OLD history, retain Recent?

[paul1149]

I fail to see the logic behind the current data purging scheme. It allows you to delete certain lengths of time into the past - the past hour, past day, past week, past month, or all data.

I would like to lighten the data load V. carries around, but it's not the history from the past month I want to lose, it the stuff from two years ago.

Shouldn't the logic of this function be reversed, allowing the user to RETAIN, not delete, data going back certain intervals?

[slake]

Under settings>privacy>save browsing history, one of the options there might work on a rolling basis.

[paul1149]

@slake said in Delete OLD history, retain Recent?:

Under settings>privacy>save browsing history, one of the options there might work on a rolling basis.

Thank you. I had forgotten about that setting. I had it set to Three Months, yet it seemed I was pulling up History in the Address Bar Suggestions from back far longer than that, which is what prompted my question. As long as it actually works more or less as I would expect, it will be fine.

[BoneTone]

@paul1149 said in Delete OLD history, retain Recent?:

Shouldn't the logic of this function be reversed, allowing the user to RETAIN, not delete, data going back certain intervals?

This is quite a common way to offer history deleting. Here's the scenario.

Users like having a history of sites they've visited for numerous reasons. The age is only peripherally related to the value of the content, and that only applies to some pages; for many pages how long it was last visited is wholly irrelevant and it retains its value throughout time.

Users also sometimes visit sites they do not want to have saved in their history. They would like to keep that information from mingling with their useful history data, again for numerous reasons. One way to achieve this is to use a private window. This has its drawbacks however -- extensions and other features typically won't work, and the user must remember to initiate the private window prior to visiting the site. Even users who are quite diligent about browsing privately for things they don't want to create a trail still make mistakes. A user also may not know beforehand that they don't want these data saved in history.

So typically, the user will have had a browsing session that got saved into history that they want to remove. That could be what they've done in the past hour, what they've worked on today, or something they've been doing this week that they just don't want cluttering their historical data.

I would say this is a far more common scenario for users who will be going into the UI and manually deleting a chunk of history. Users who want to have their history continuously purged will most likely have some sort of automated process for doing so. Whether that's having it deleted when the app closes, or some kind of expiration or timer, the user isn't going and clicking it manually every time. Users who keep their history data however, never want to delete the really old stuff (unless they're encountering performance or space issues) but will want to remove recent data.

[BoneTone]

@slake said in Delete OLD history, retain Recent?:

Under settings>privacy>save browsing history, one of the options there might work on a rolling basis.

Exactly like this... I took a long time with my reply in composition or I would have referenced this. This is the expiration method of automated history removal. That's how people who don't want to keep history data but for a short time in the past do it. The manual removal is for people who keep their history data but want to remove some specific data easily, like a recent session or many recent sessions that aren't intended to be a part of the larger useful historical data.