With over 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook has become one of the most popular social media platforms for sharing photos, videos, and other multimedia content. As users watch more videos on Facebook, they may eventually want to delete some of their viewing history for privacy or storage reasons. Unfortunately, Facebook does not have a built-in feature to allow users to delete their watched videos history. However, there are some workarounds that may help you clear your Facebook video watch history.
Why You May Want to Delete Watched Videos on Facebook
There are a few reasons why someone may want to delete their Facebook watched videos history:
- Privacy concerns – Some users want to delete their video watch history so that it is not tracked and connected to their account profile and activity.
- Storage limitations – Facebook takes up storage space on your device, so deleting watched videos can free up space.
- Clean up old videos – Over time, users may watch videos they no longer care about or find relevant, so deleting old watch history cleans up video recommendations.
- Inappropriate content – Users may want to remove videos from their watch history that are inappropriate, offensive, or that they accidentally watched.
Whatever the reason, the desire for more control over one’s Facebook watched video history is understandable. Unfortunately, Facebook does not make this easy or straightforward.
Facebook’s Video Watch History Settings
Facebook does allow you to pause or control video watch history to some extent through its settings. Here’s what you can do:
- Pause Watch History – This prevents any new videos you watch from being added to your history, but does not delete existing history.
- Clear Watch and Search History – This claims to delete your video watch and search history, but users report it does not actually clear watched video history.
So Facebook’s own settings do not reliably allow you to delete your full video watch history. Read on for some alternative methods.
Use the Facebook Activity Log to Delete Watched Videos
The closest tool Facebook provides to delete specific videos from your watch history is the Activity Log:
- Go to your Facebook Profile and click on the down arrow in the top right corner.
- Select “Settings & Privacy” then click on “Settings”.
- Click on “Your Facebook Information” in the left column.
- Select “Activity Log” from the different categories.
- In the filters at the top, select “Videos” to show only your video activity.
- Scroll through your video watch history and click on “Remove” for any videos you want to delete.
This is time consuming if you have a lot of video watch history, but allows you to selectively delete videos one by one. However, it can take up to 90 days for the videos to be completely removed from Facebook’s systems.
Use a Third Party App to Delete Watched Videos
Since Facebook does not provide an easy in-house option, many users opt to use third party apps to delete their Facebook video watch history:
- Social Book Post Manager – Browser extension that lets you delete videos from your watch history.
- FB Purity – Browser extension for Facebook that can erase your video watch history.
- FBRemover – Google Chrome extension that deletes Facebook activity, including watched videos.
The advantage of these platforms is they let you delete your video history in bulk rather than one video at a time. However, you do need to trust the third party with access to your Facebook profile. Use reputable apps at your own discretion.
Delete Facebook Viewing Activity with Ad Preferences
Facebook uses your video watch history to target ads. You can remove some of this video information from your Facebook ad profile:
- Go to “Settings & Privacy” then click “Settings.”
- Select “Ads” in the left side menu.
- Click on “Your Information” then “Your Categories”.
- Find any video related interests like “video” or the name of videos you’ve watched and click “Remove” to delete them.
This prevents videos you’ve watched from being used to select ads shown to you. However, it does not delete the videos from your overall watch history.
Adjust Facebook App Settings
Some Facebook video watch history is stored directly on your device by the Facebook app. Try these app adjustments:
- Restrict Background Activity – Stop Facebook from collecting activity when not using the app.
- Limit Ad Tracking – Opt out of ad targeting to limit video watch tracking.
- Clear Cache – Delete cached Facebook data including some video watch history.
- Uninstall/Reinstall App – Removes all Facebook app activity as a last resort.
Combining these app-specific settings with your account-based adjustments can help you take control of your Facebook video trail.
Use Your Web Browser Settings
Your web browser stores traces of your Facebook activity as well. Try these browser steps:
- Delete Cookies/Data – Removing Facebook cookies deletes some video watch data.
- Use Incognito Mode – Stops Facebook from tracking newly watched videos.
- Clear Cache – Deletes cached Facebook browser data including video info.
- Browser Extensions – Install privacy extensions that block Facebook tracers.
Browser settings tend to have broader effects, but can also target Facebook specifically if you want to limit video tracking.
Delete Facebook Viewing Activity from Your Profile
The videos you watch on Facebook may show up on your profile under “Recent Activities.” To remove them:
- Go to your profile page and click “More” under your intro box.
- Click on “Recent Activities” then use the toggle to turn it off.
- Go back in and click “Manage Activity” to delete specific videos.
This stops videos you watch from being featured on your profile. The videos will still remain in your overall watch history unless deleted through other methods.
Ask Facebook to Delete Your Video History
If all else fails, you can try directly asking Facebook to delete your video watch history:
- Go to the Facebook Help Center.
- Click “Contact Us” then “Something Else” and “Videos”.
- Select “I want to delete a video I watched”.
- Use the form to request Facebook removes your video viewing activity.
Facebook may or may not comply with requests to delete video history, but it’s worth a shot if you’re unable to remove videos through other methods.
Prevent Facebook from Tracking Future Video Watching
To stop accumulating more tracked watch history:
- Pause Watch History in Settings
- Use Incognito Browser Windows
- Avoid Watching Videos While Logged In
- Use a Private VPN Connection
- Install Browser Extensions to Block Trackers
- Frequently Clear Caches and Delete Facebook Cookies
Combining these preventative measures can help limit your Facebook video trail going forward.
The Challenges of Deleting Facebook Video History
There are a few reasons why it’s difficult to fully delete your Facebook video watch history:
- No native delete feature – Facebook does not offer an easy way itself.
- Data spread across servers – Video data exists across Facebook’s systems.
- Used for ad targeting – Facebook relies on it for ad optimization.
- Tracking from apps and devices – It’s stored off of just your account.
- No incentive for Facebook – Less data makes ads less effective.
Essentially, Facebook has little incentive to make it easy to delete your video history, since preserving the data improves their services. Users have to take matters into their own hands.
Should You Delete Facebook Video History? Risk vs. Reward
There are pros and cons to deleting your Facebook video watch history users should be aware of:
Potential Pros
- Increased privacy
- Less data collection
- More control over information
- Reduced device storage needs
- Better video recommendations
- Avoid associations with old videos
Potential Cons
- Lose video watch insights
- Extra time and effort required
- Less relevant advertisements
- Might affect friend recommendations
- Data could still exist in backups
- Facebook offers less value
There are benefits on both sides. Each user will have to weigh the pros and cons and decide what is right for their needs and priorities.
Conclusion
Facebook makes it intentionally difficult to delete your full video watch history due to their data collection and advertising priorities. However, through a combination of Facebook settings tweaks, using third party apps, browser adjustments, activity log cleaning, app reinstalls, and sending requests to Facebook, users can delete some video history. This may require significant time and effort.
Preventing Facebook’s future tracking of what you watch poses challenges as well, but a mix of privacy measures can at least limit the amount of new video viewing data tied to your account. Overall, deleting Facebook video watch history involves a risk vs. reward trade-off each user must evaluate and resolve given their particular situation.