Safari no longer clears browser history on request after update to Catalina 10.15.4

[betaperson]

"On closing and re-launching Safari this should have logged you out of your websites too."

Well, that is the problem. it doesn't.

It takes me about 4 run throughs of 'clear history' and 'manage website data' for the deletions to stick.
manage website data' keeps repopulating.

Also, turning off wifi helps, but not always.

 

[kotovasii]

Hi,

I updated to Catalina 10.15.4 this night. In Safari top left menu, I clicked on "Clear browser history..." (whole history) then quit and relaunched it. Usually, this clears everything and am therefore logged out from all websites.

But this time, no. I was still logged in all my websites including MacRumors forum. Even some websites preferences were kept such as dark mode for those websites that allow you to toggle this on and off.

I repeated the operation several times, frenetically clicking on "Clear browser history...", rebooted my MBP 2018, so on and so forth. Unsuccessfully.

I looked at Safari > Preferences > Confidentiality > "Manage website data", but it stated that no data were present, which seems logical as I cleared history. But despite this, I witness the issue.

Any clue?

Thanks for your help.

Hi Yomps, any luck with this? I have had this problem for a long time now (since Safari 14) and it drives me mad as there is no shortcut for this and every time I need to go through Privacy setting to manually remove this. I am struggling to understand if this is just a selected users who are affected or this is a new "feature". Previously "Clear History" would clear everything. Also why is "Clear History" now present twice: in Safari and in History -- appears to perform the same function?

 

[adrianlondon]

I rarely use Safari any more, and when I do I run it permanently in privacy mode (settings / general / safari-opens-with), but I created a script that clears all caches/cookies, which I run from the menu bar.

Script Editor / settings / general / show script menu in menu bar

tell application "Safari"
    activate
end tell

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Safari"
        keystroke "," using command down
        tell window 1
            click button "Privacy" of toolbar 1
            click button "Manage website Data…" of group 1 of group 1
            delay 5
            click button "Remove All" of sheet 1
            keystroke return
            delay 1
            click button "Done" of sheet 1
        end tell
        keystroke "w" using {shift down, command down}
    end tell
end tell

 

[Yoms]

Hi Yomps, any luck with this? I have had this problem for a long time now (since Safari 14) and it drives me mad as there is no shortcut for this and every time I need to go through Privacy setting to manually remove this. I am struggling to understand if this is just a selected users who are affected or this is a new "feature". Previously "Clear History" would clear everything. Also why is "Clear History" now present twice: in Safari and in History -- appears to perform the same function?

Hi mate,
Yes and no. I did not solve the issue per se, but since my initial message I reinstalled my Mac from scratch and I'm on Big Sur now. I have not witnessed the issue so far.

That said, I think cleaning Safari-related data might help. I had an issue with Mail.app on Big Sur and cleaning those data forced macOS to recreate them from scratch and helped me get rid of the issue.

Here's the thread:

[SOLVED] Mail.app opened, but nothing is displayed expect the menu bar at the top

[SOLVED] OK, so using the link provided above by FuturePilot, I then searched for Mail.app factory reset and found this topic: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5118986 So, here's what I did: 1) Go to Settings => Security and Confidentiality => grant the Terminal.app access to the whole...

forums.macrumors.com

I understand you have an issue with Safari and not Mail, but what I mean is that applying a similar process to Safari as I did with Mail might do the trick. You obviously have to delete Safari folders and not Mail's. A search on "factory reset Safari" might provide some additional info.

Good luck.