This New Setting Hides Your Recent Searches in Safari on IPhone
If your iPhone is running iOS 18.4 , you may have noticed some major new features like AI-powered priority notifications and seven brand new emoji . However, one change may cause some controversy: Safari’s search feature now shows a list of your recent searches every time you search for something new. Useful? May be. Breach of confidentiality? Definitely.
Don’t worry: if you don’t like Safari’s new Recent Searches screen, you can disable the feature entirely or delete all recent results pretty quickly.
How Safari’s new search screen works
When you open a new tab and tap “Search or Sign in to a Website” in iOS 18.4, you’ll see a new screen showing all your recent search results, as you can see below.
There are many reasons to disable this feature. Perhaps you don’t want to be reminded of what you searched for yesterday, or you don’t want anyone else using the device to see your recent search history. Apple chose to enable this by default rather than optional. But the good thing is that whenever Apple adds a new feature like this, there’s often an extra toggle switch somewhere in Settings so you can go back to the way things were before.
How to Clear Search Results from Recent Searches in Safari
If you like this feature but want to delete your search results from time to time, there’s an easy fix. While there’s no option to delete searches individually, you can delete all recent searches with one tap.
Open the search screen, click the Clear All button at the top, and watch all your searches instantly disappear. As you search more they will start to fill up again.
How to turn off recent search results in Safari
It’s not just that this feature is a privacy nightmare. It also takes up the entire screen and you can’t see the start page when it’s in use. Even if you feel like you have nothing to hide, this feature will hide Safari from you.
To turn off this feature, open the Settings app and go to Apps > Safari . Now scroll down and turn off the Show recent searches feature. When you return to the Search menu, you will no longer see the latest search results.