Free Online browser history tools.
Chrome on your laptop keeps the last 90 days but Google has been keeping its own copy. Every device you have signed into, going back years, and every YouTube video you have watched is logged by Google. You can ask Google for it, drop the file here and read it as charts, categories and download it as a spreadsheet.
FreeNo account neededNothing to install
Years
How far back Google's copy goes
90 days
All your computer keeps on its own
1 file
Browsing and YouTube together
Free
Reports, charts and Excel export
01
One timeline, every device
A work laptop, a desktop at home, a phone on the train — Google recorded all of them against the same account. The Takeout file merges them and keeps a separate id per device, so you can read work and home apart, or all of it as one story.
02
Years, not a quarter
Month-by-month usage only means something with years behind it. A local history file gives you one season; the Takeout file shows when a habit started, when it peaked, and whether it stopped.
03
Categories, counted
Every domain is classified - social media, search, shopping, email, streaming, news (with misinformation flags from third-party catalogues), adult and piracy-flagged sites. Ranked and charted, not just listed.
04
What YouTube served you
Tick YouTube in the same export and the report covers viewing too: most-watched channels, when you watched them, and how many adverts were played at you. Google records no durations, so the time spent on advertising is worked out from the gap between each advert and whatever followed it — on a typical export, hours rather than minutes.
05
A spreadsheet you keep
What Google sends is JSON full of Unix timestamps and escaped Unicode titles. We convert it to real dates in your own time zone and hand back an Excel file — your choice of columns and date format, with the viewing sheets alongside.
How much of YouTube was adverts?
Tick YouTube in the same Takeout export and the report covers what you watched as well as where you browsed: your most-watched channels, when you watched them, and how many adverts Google served you along the way.
Google does not record how long an advert lasted, so we work it out from the gap between each one and whatever played next. On a typical export that comes to hours, not minutes — and the share tends to climb year on year.
1,177
Adverts served
5 hours
Spent watching them
18.5%
Of everything played
4.4
Videos per advert
Sample figures, from one year of a made-up viewing history.
Three steps, about four clicks at Google
01
Ask Google
Open Google Takeout, deselect everything, then pick Chrome and inside it BrowserHistory. Tick YouTube as well if you want your viewing reported too. Nothing else - it keeps the file small.
02
Wait for the email
One product and one data type is a small job, so the archive usually arrives in minutes rather than the hours a full Takeout takes.
03
Upload it here
Drop the zip in as it came, or a single BrowserHistory.json or watch-history.json from inside it. Choose your time zone and the report builds itself.
Already have the file from Google?
Uploading your file
Starting…
A report, not a dump
Sites ranked by hits and labelled by category, usage by hour, day and month, your most-watched YouTube channels, how much of your viewing was advertising, and the whole thing exportable to Excel. Below is the top of a sample report.
| Website | Category | Hits |
|---|---|---|
| twitter.com | Social Media | 12,842 |
| google.co.uk | Search Engines | 7,488 |
| facebook.com | Social Media | 4,915 |
| bbc.co.uk | News | 4,377 |
| mail.google.com | 3,310 | |
| reddit.com | Social Media | 3,120 |
Sample data. A real report ranks the top 100.
Three smaller ways in
Chrome history file
The database Chrome keeps on the computer itself. Same reports, one quarter of history, and no waiting.
Find it on your computerMicrosoft Edge history
Edge runs the same engine as Chrome, so its local history file reads exactly the same way.
Find your Edge fileAmazon Alexa recordings
Not browsing at all - a guide to requesting every recording Amazon made on your Echo devices.
Get your data from Amazon