How can I remove browsing history in a non-headless Chromium browser using Node.js and Puppeteer?

Other Questions Puppeteer
1

I’m attempting to clear the browsing history in a non-headless Chromium browser using Node.js with Puppeteer. I’ve implemented the following snippets, but none have yielded results.

await page.goto('chrome://settings/clearBrowserData');
await page.keyboard.press('Enter');

For my second attempt:

await page.keyboard.press('Control');
await page.keyboard.press('Shift');
await page.keyboard.press('Delete');
await page.keyboard.press('Enter');

I also tried using .evaluateHandle() and .click() methods, but those didn’t work either. If anyone has a solution for clearing history in Puppeteer, I would appreciate your guidance.

2

To remove browsing history in Chromium when using Puppeteer, the direct approach you’re attempting might be blocked by browser security restrictions. Instead, you can launch the browser with a fresh user data directory to simulate a clean state each time you run your script. You can achieve this by specifying the --user-data-dir argument with a temporary directory, like this:

const browser = await puppeteer.launch({
  headless: false, 
  args: ['--user-data-dir=/tmp/my-temp-dir'], // Use unique path per session
});

Each session starts without any history, effectively clearing it. Remember to delete the temporary data folder between sessions.