3 Solutions to Clear History and Website Data Not Working

Updated May 18,2018 | by Cody

Clearing History and website data on your iPhone can help protect your privacy and free up storage space on iPhone. However, in some cases, you may find the option Clear History and Website Data not working on iPhone.

It is frustrating when you go to Settings to clear history, only to find out that the Clear History and Website Data in Settings app is greyed out. It is not a big deal and here is a definitive guide to fix this issue.

Method 1: Disable Safari Restrictions

The most likely reason that stops you from clearing history and website data is Safari restriction. In order to block other people to access certain content on your iPhone or iPad, you may have enabled the Safari restriction.

You can follow the steps below to disable Safari restriction.

Step 1. Open Settings app on your iOS device and select General.

Step 2. Scroll down and select on Restrictions.

Step 3. Enter the Restrictions Passcode to access it. If you forget your restriction passcode, you can reset restriction passcode on iPhone.

Step 4. Scroll down to select Websites.

Step 5. Select the first item All Websites.

Then you can go to Settings > Safari > Clear History and Website Data to remove history and Website Data from Safari.  

Method 2: Reset Settings

If the previous method does not work, you can reset your iPhone or see the next method. First, you can perform a network reset by going to Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings.

If that does not work, you can select Reset All Settings, which does not remove any saved data on your iPhone. After that, you should be able to clear website data.

Erase All Content and Settings should be your last method because it will remove everything along with the browser history and website data you saved on your iPhone. Before doing it, it is highly recommended to backup iPhone data to computer or iCloud.

Method 3: Replace Safari

If you have gone through a lot to fix this Safari problem to no valid, then you may consider giving up on Safari. you can use Chrome or Firefox, which you can download from App Store, as your main web browser on iPhone.

To turn off Safari, you can go to Settings > General > Restrictions > Enable Restrictions > Safari and toggle it off. Then the Safari icon will be removed from your iPhone toolbar.

Bonus Tip: Clear Other Junk File

If you want to clear history and website data because you want to reclaim iPhone performance and space storage space, there is another way to do this. Besides website data, other useless files or caches stored on your iPhone.

To clean up your iPhone or iPad for more space, you do have to manually delete files one by one. You can use IOTransfer iPhone cleaner to easily free up storage and reclaim performance with one click.

To free up iPhone storage space with IOTransfer:

Step 1. Free download IOTransfer and install it on your computer running Windows 10/8/7.

Step 2. Connect your iPhone to PC. You need to authorize the connection on your iPhone if you connect it for the first time.

Step 3. Within IOTransfer, click the CLEAN tab at the top and click the Scan button.

Step 4. When the scan finishes, you will see how much space can be freed. Then Click Clean My iPhone.

Watch this video tutorial for more details.

Instantly, you will have extra free space without deleting any software. Besides that, IOTransfer can be more helpful. It can help you backup your iPhone in one click, transfer data between iPhone and PC, and save videos to iPhone for offline viewing from 100+ websites (including YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, etc)

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