# Safari History doesn't clear permanently



## jacksonoreilly

In Sarfari v 3.1.2, clearing history deletes history showing under Safari, however when I use Spotlight to search a keyword This Mac, Contents, there is the exact page I "Cleared" showing up.

How can I PERMANENTLY delete this history?

thank you


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## macthorough

Reseting Safari should clear safari out. There may be a cached file in your \users\library\caches\Safari folder but resetting safari emptied that folder. Try trashing the \users\library\caches\Safari and rebooting (DO NOT EMPTY THE TRASH). Once yo log back in and everything is cool then empty trash.


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## sinclair_tm

The problem you are facing is that spotlight makes an index, so it's not pulling from Safari's history, but it's own index that it made. Open the system preferences and goto the Spotlight pref pane. You can now tell it to not search the folder that holds Safari's history but adding the folder to the do not search list. IMHO, Apple still needs to fix how Spotlight and Time Machine select the files and folders they work with. It would be nice if instead of making a list of things to exclude from these apps, if they made a list of things to include. Then I'd start using them.


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## macthorough

I thought it might be something related to some meta instance of the safari cache. When is apple gonna come out with a feature, Reset SPOTLIGHT similar to reset Safari (which clears private browsing)?

I bet there is a spotlight plist file you can blow away for this.... so you don't have to mess with the spotlight preferences. I'd check \users\library\caches and \users\library\Preferences for and files similar to com.apple.spotlight.plist or any file names spotlight in the \users\library\ and trash them..

Than might reset spotlight but im not sure what affect it would have on the spotlight indexing... you might have to re-index wowwie!!!


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## sinclair_tm

Well, those are not the indexes, and blowing out Spotlight's prefs will not slove this issue. The only way to reset Spotlight is to let it delete it's own index by telling it to not search the hard drive. At this point it will delete the index for the drive. But then if you then pull the hard drive off the do not search list, it will reindex the drive, which will take a long time, and slow the computer down.


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