How to clear browsing history using JavaScript?

As MDN Window.history() describes :

For top-level pages you can see the list of pages in the session history, accessible via the History object, in the browser's dropdowns next to the back and forward buttons.

For security reasons the History object doesn't allow the non-privileged code to access the URLs of other pages in the session history, but it does allow it to navigate the session history.

There is no way to clear the session history or to disable the back/forward navigation from unprivileged code. The closest available solution is the location.replace() method, which replaces the current item of the session history with the provided URL.

So there is no Javascript method to clear the session history, instead, if you want to block navigating back to a certain page, you can use the location.replace() method, and pass the page link as parameter, which will not push the page to the browser's session history list. For example, there are three pages:

a.html:

<!doctype html>
<html>
    <head>
        <title>a.html page</title>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    </head>
    <body>
         <p>This is <code style="color:red">a.html</code> page ! Go to <a href="b.html">b.html</a> page !</p>        
    </body>
 </html>

b.html:

<!doctype html>
<html>
    <head>
    <title>b.html page</title>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
</head>
<body>
    <p>This is <code style="color:red">b.html</code> page ! Go to <a id="jumper" href="c.html">c.html</a> page !</p>

    <script type="text/javascript">
        var jumper = document.getElementById("jumper");
        jumper.onclick = function(event) {
            var e = event || window.event ;
            if(e.preventDefault) {
                e.preventDefault();
            } else {
                e.returnValue = true ;
            }
            location.replace(this.href);
            jumper = null;
        }
    </script>
</body>

c.html:

<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>c.html page</title>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
</head>
<body>
    <p>This is <code style="color:red">c.html</code> page</p>
</body>
</html>

With href link, we can navigate from a.html to b.html to c.html. In b.html, we use the location.replace(c.html) method to navigate from b.html to c.html. Finally, we go to c.html*, and if we click the back button in the browser, we will jump to **a.html.

So this is it! Hope it helps.


Can you try using document.location.replace() it is used to clear the last entry in the history and replace it with the address of a new url. replace() removes the URL of the current document from the document history, meaning that it is not possible to use the "back" button to navigate back to the original document.

<script type="text/javascript">
    function Navigate(){   
         window.location.replace('your link');
        return false;
    }
   </script>

HTML: 

   <button onclick="Navigate()">Replace document</button>

It's not possible to clear user history without plugins. And also it's not an issue at developer's perspective, it's the burden of the user to clear his history.

For information refer to How to clear browsers (IE, Firefox, Opera, Chrome) history using JavaScript or Java except from browser itself?

Tags:

Javascript

Browser History

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