If you donโt want your partner, spouse or roommate snooping on your Google search or YouTube watch histories but you donโt want to resort to using incognito mode, good news: you can nowย hide both behind password verification.
All of your Google activity, including web and map searches, YouTube history,ย and Google assistant queries, are compiled and, by default, visible atย activity.google.com. That means that anyone with access to a device youโre logged into can see what youโve searched, watched,ย and asked.
Once you enable verification, you (or anyone else) will have to enter your Google account password to reveal your activity history.
To turn this feature on, go toย activity.google.com. Log in if you havenโt already, and click theย โManage My Activity verificationโย link.
In the pop-up, toggle on the โRequire extra verificationโ button and press Save.
Youโll be asked to enter your password on the main Google login screen to confirm. Once enabled, youโll have to tap the Verify button and enter your password each time you want to reveal your activity history.
In a practical sense, this verification isnโt super secureโit simply requires you to enter your Google account password. If the person youโre trying to hide from also knows your password (maybe because you share an account), theyโll be able to get in easily.
If youย reallyย donโt want anyone to see your history, you can manually orย automatically delete your Googleย activities. Google will auto-delete anything older than 3 months, 18 months,ย or 36 months (from your My Google Activity page, go to Web & App Activity > Auto-delete and select your preference). You can also manually remove items from your Web & Activity page or toggle off the Saving activity feature. The same process applies to your YouTube and Location histories.
