Google Deleted History – How To Recover Chrome History

Google deleted history is not genuinely gone after you, or someone else wiped out chrome history. This tutorial is for two different kinds of people. For those who want to make sure their google chrome history is truly deleted and for those who want to find out what type of browser history was deleted on a specific computer.

Even though the delete function works, there are still some data that are remaining on the computer. Recovering internet browsing history is possible if you know what you are doing if you don’t, well, here is the article for you!

There are countless reasons why you would want to recover google deleted history or from any other browser. I get it, and you are looking out for your kid if they have been looking at websites they should not have. Or you might just be looking for a website or URL, that you have forgotten, but you visited that website a few months ago.

Depending on your reasons why you have googled this article, there are ways how to recover the data, even though it was erased.

There are five best ways how to recover google deleted history:

  • Recover Google deleted history through System Restore
  • Finding erased internet history through Desktop search programs
  • You can find out what was deleted via Cookies
  • Accessing via log files the deleted browsing history
  • Restoring Internet Browser Folder

Method number 1: Recovering google chrome deleted history through System Restore

You can recover google deleted history thought system restore application, which is available in windows computers. The similar app probably is available for mac books, but this tutorial is for Windows Operation System users.
System Restore Method

This is the first and maybe even the simplest method to get the data you are searching for. You can recover quite quickly the internet history, that was deleted by system restore. I am sure that this option is somewhere on Mac computers as well. But this is mainly for windows user, I bet 90% of Windows users know about this function, but they just never thought of using it this way. Click on your windows button or windows start menu. Then you need to click on Control Panel. In the control panel, you need to go to System and Security. Once you are in there, you should see several options. The third option from the bottom is Back and Restore, choose this one. And you should see clickable option “Recover system settings or your computer.”

Yes, this is it, what we were looking for. Now you should remember which is the correct date to restore the computer to. If you are “spying” on someone, it is probably hard to guess the period, but if you are looking for a lost URL or website, you should have an idea when you have visited the site and how long after you have deleted the browsing history. Once you have this figured out, choose the date that fits your needs and starts the restoring process. Please don’t do anything while this is going on. Once is the process finished, your computer will need a reboot, and after that, you should have what you were looking for.

If you don’t have any System Restore files, it is probably because you have set this option off, because it was slowing down your computer and taking up storage data from your pc. But don’t worry, I will teach you four more methods to do this.

Method number 2: Finding erased internet history through Desktop search programs

You can recover deleted google history through desktop search programs. They have a function of finding erased internet data.
Desktop Search Programs Method

So for those of you who had their system restore function off or did not have the right system restore the file from a particular day. You can just quickly type the keywords you have used or that you think someone has used and type them in. There is a good chance that the full keyword and website will pop up. If not, let’s take a look at method number 3.

Method number 3: You can find out what was deleted via Cookies

Recovering google chrome deleted history can be done through cookies in your internet browser, once you find your cookies you have all the data that you need.
Cookies Method

Cookies are used pretty much on 99.99% of websites that are online in 2019. And with them, we can access the deleted history from google chrome. A cookie is a text file, which is stored in your internet browser. Cookies are storing the information about you as a user of a specific website, your preferred settings, etc. And they can be used as a spying tool, which almost no one thinks of. But mainly, their use is to remember your account settings when you land on that website again.

It is pretty much the same process in every browser to look at cookies that are stored. You need to go to options, then settings. If you are using chrome browser, once you are in your settings, you need to click on advanced. Once you have done that, more options/settings will show up. Click on Content settings. And in content settings, there will be Cookies as a first option, click on it. Again, more opportunities will show up, make sure that you click on “See all cookies and site data.”

Boom, you did it. You just have found all the cookies, and with those, you can reverse engineer what the browsing history which was deleted from Google was. Pretty much the same way, you can find cookies in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and other internet browsers.

Method number 4: Accessing via log files the deleted browsing history

Retrieving internet browser history can be done via accessing log files through an index.dat file, where all the URLs are stored.
Log Files Method

If none of these three methods have worked for you or you were not able to try them. This will surely work. With this method, you can find google chrome deleted history even from a very long time ago and also from other browsers as well. Even though this method is not that hard and I will walk you through it step by step. Few warnings might show up, for example, signs like that your data might be lost or deleted, etc.

This does not happen every time, but it definitely can. If you are scared or not sure, please don’t do this and try a different method. Also, this is a tutorial for windows pc, something similar might also be on a mac book, but this is strictly tutorial for windows. On all windows, computers are stored arbitrary data, which are called index.dat. Index.dat is a file, which is hidden on your pc. Index.dat contains all of the sites that you have ever visited on your computer. Yes, index. Dat contains every single URL you have ever visited unless you have deleted this file. I will walk you through how to find and open this file, but for you to be able to find this file, you need to set up in windows to show hidden folders and hidden files as well.

How to show hidden folders and files on Windows

Click on the windows button or windows start button, go to Control Panel, and there you need to choose “Appearance and Personalization.” The second thing from the bottom should be FOlder Options, choose that one. In Folder Options, you should see three tabs: General, View, and Search. Choose View tab, and in there you should see the option Show hidden files, folders and drivers, click on that and click on Apply and after that select OK. Now your hidden files and folders on your computer are finally visible, and we can look for index.tab.

Go to your computer (My Computer) and use the searching tool. Just type”index.dat,” usually it will be faster if you look through your C drive, but that is not mandatory, and also, it could be a different drive if you have several ones. If you want to make the searching faster, choose the hard drive where you have your operating system, which is in 90% of cases the C drive.

After the search is done, you should see several index.dat files. To be able to open index.dat, you will need software for it, and there is a good chance that you don’t have one on your computer, either download one. Or you can use some website, which will open the file for you. Probably the best for this is Softpedia or CNET, both of those websites offer .dat file readers. Once you have this file opened, you have done it! Now you have restored google deleted history!

Now you should go back to Folder settings and turn off the settings for invisible folders and files to be visible. Yes, you don’t have to do that, but there were hidden for a reason. And believe it or not, that reason was or still is quite good. Usually, these folders and files are from your Operating System, and if you accidentally delete these, your computer might not work as it is supposed to or at all. So if I were you, I would go back to Control Panel -> Appearance and Personalization -> Folder Options -> View and there choose “DOn’t show hidden files, folders, or drives” click on Apply and then click on OK. So now you are done and don’t have to worry about your PC.

Method number 5: Restoring Internet Browser Folder

Recovery of deleted google chrome history can be achieved via folder restoration process, which is quite easy and can be done within a few minutes of work.
Folder Restoration Method

This method works for all browsers, not just chrome, but let’s use chrome as an example.

You can restore almost any folder to its previous version, but before you do this, I would back up that folder and maybe even created a zip to be sure that you don’t lose current data. But with this easy trick, you can retrieve deleted google history in a few minutes. You need to find the folder; it is usually on your C drive. Open C drive and follow this path: Users -> “Your Username” -> App Data -> Local -> Google ( or your browser) -> Chrome ( if you are using different internet browser, this might differ).

Once you are in this folder, you should see only one folder called User Data. Click on this folder with a right mouse button and choose “Restore previous versions.” Once this process is done, you should be able to view the browsing history, which was deleted.

My last words

Again, thank you for reading this article. I hope I have helped you to solve your problem. Please keep in mind that all of these methods working for restoring google deleted history, but this does not work only for Chrome browsers. These methods work for recovering internet history, which was removed in general, so with slight adjustments, you should be able to make these work on Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and other internet browsers as well. In case none of this method has worked for you, you might give try a technique from my article on how to recover deleted video from youtube. There is a suitable method with Disk Drill on how to recover deleted files. So it will work even with this issue, but it is a quite lengthy process.

1 thought on “Google Deleted History – How To Recover Chrome History”

  1. Thank you for this info. I truly appreciate your time and effort in writing this article, however, I don’t have Windows available on my Android tablet or phone. Would you have any suggestions for those?

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