How to remove a (mis)typed-in address in Opera?
37 CommentsPublished April 14th, 2008 6:34 AM EDT By Tamil
You can remove all typed-in addresses using delete private data (Tools → Delete Private Data… → Clear history of typed-in addresses).
To remove a (mis)typed-in address,
- Note the path to Opera directory (Help → About Opera).
- Close Opera.
- Open opera.dir in any text editor from Opera directory.
- Remove the line containing unwanted entry & save. Never delete first line as it contains number of typed-in addresses. Opera will update first line automatically.
To remove an entry, delete that line in opera.dir file
If you also want to remove site from drop down list of suggestions, see How to remove specific webpages from your browsing history?
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using
Wow, that’s just so much easier in Firefox. Shift+Delete.
using
You can also use Delete in Firefox.
using
So Daniel won’t write on here any more?
Welcome, Tamil. I’m a read your blog too.
using
Welcome on OperaWatch, Tamil! It’s good to see someone knowledgeable (I know you from the Opera Community site).
using
Hi Tamil,
Why ? Opera ca do that by itself !
1-Open opera:about
2-Select profile’s path
3-Right click > Go to Web address
4-Click Opera.dir
5-CTRL+F3 or right click > Source
6-Edit/Delete lines and apply modification
7-Close and re-open Open to view result.
I used to launch Opera integrated “source” editor for any text file edition
@+
–
Pierre
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There’s a much easier way to do this within opera that doesn’t involve editing any config files:
Open up history (either using the panel or Ctrl+Alt+H).
Delete the selected URL by right clicking on it and selecting delete (panel) or by pressing the Delete button on the opera history toolbar or the one on your keyboard (Ctrl+Alt+H)
You can even delete multiple entries.
using
Tamil, doesn’t deleting things from the history accomplish the same goal? When I delete items from the history, they are at least no longer displayed as suggestions in the drop-down while I’m entering addresses.
using
@GT500:
I *think* it depends whether you have entered the url in address bar and hit Enter or just visited it.
using
Welcome Tamil!
using
Great to see you here Tamil!
using
glad to see you here, tamil
using
@edvakf:
Daniel Goldman will post.
@Pierre:
dir file may open in Adobe Shockwave or prompt download dialog.
@Rhonnysparks & GT500:
Typed-in address cannot be deleted from history.
@edvakf, Jezetha, Cyro, Manoj & lamarca:
Thank you.
using
@Tamil:
As I mentioned, they do not show up in the drop-down list of suggestions while I’m typing a URL after I delete them from the history. If they are still stored in opera.dir, then it does not appear that Opera actually cares about the contents of that file. Perhaps it’s kept for backwards compatibility?
using
As GT500 pointed out, if you delete a typed in address in history, then it is no longer visible in opera.
The only way you can see it is if you use opera:historysearch but then again, removing an item from opera.dir doesn’t solve this either.
so what’s the advantage of manually removing a url from opera.dir as opposed to deleting it from history?
it looks to me that if anything there’s a bug in opera where a delete url isn’t removed from opera.dir
using
ok, I’m going to answer my own question :p
after doing a couple of tests, it turns out that when you delete a typed in url from opera’s history the next time you restart opera, opera will automatically remove it from opera.dir (no bug after all).
which means that there is absolutely no advantage in editing the opera.dir file.
using
I’m talking about typed-in addresses shown by Opera when you click the down arrow in address field.
using
This is so Win95
We should have something in *NIX style too. Anything with ‘grep’ will do.
using
I don’t want Opera keeping a log of stuff I typed it. I though they did away with that a long time ago.
I’m going to do some magic with file permissions, and see if I can prevent Opera from writing to this file.
using
That sucks. Opera should allow Delete (or shift+delete) or rather never put 404’s in history.
using
OK, setting permissions so that my user account no longer has access to read from or write to the opera.dir prevents Opera from saving those addresses, and I’m not getting any weird errors.
It’s sad to see that this feature still exists without any means of control from within the browser. I thought we had moved beyond that years ago.
If anyone else wants, I’ll make a video detailing how to prevent Opera from saving everything you type in the address bar. That will prevent any need to go looking for this file to remove addresses that should have been deleted along with your history.
I always thought that, being an Opera user, I was safe from things that automatically log what I type. Now I find out that all of these years, anyone could have walked up to one of my computers, pressed the down arrow key in the address bar, and would have been presented with a log of everything I had typed in.
I guess the real question is, does the “Delete Private Data” function clear this log, or is directly editing it with a text editor or deleting it the only way to modify it? If the log cannot be cleared from within Opera, then I would consider this a gross security violation. Especially on a public computer, where you do not want the next person to know what web addresses you’ve been typing in.
using
@GT500: as you have said, you CAN delete all typed-in URL under “Tools” > “Delete private data” > “Detailed options” > “Delete all typed-in history”
so the log is cleared from within Opera, and your security violation isn’t really one.
@Tamil: Nice to see you here, alon with Daniel goldman. I hope to have more news from himself soon.
*RESTLESS TAMIL WILL SOON INVADE THE WORLD AND TAKE OVER OPERA, THANKS TO HIS MONKEY ARMY*
using
@Tamil: ok I now know why we aren’t seeing eye to eye
I use opera without the address bar (I enter in URLs & nicknames with F2 & Shift+F2 respectively), so whenever I mistype a URL, I discover this when the wrong page loads.
By waiting until the page is loaded, the mistyped url is added to my browsing history so if I remove it from my history, the next time opera restarts, it automatically removes it from the list of typed in URLs.
However, if you stop the page before it loads (which would be common if you can see the address bar
), then the page is never added to your browsing history, meaning the only way to remove the mistyped URL is by manually removing it from opera.dir
Thanks for the tip, you should maybe put a clarification of what a mistyped URL is (url you’ve typed in but stopped from loading) so that others like me don’t get confused
using
this is the perfect place for Tamil: WELCOME!!
using
Now people think that Daniel has turned Operawatch over to Tamil. This is kind of humorous…
using
this post is really an anti-tip. it is 2008 not 1989, and people hate when someone asks them to go to somewhere, edit somewhere etc. showing that is showing Opera weakness.
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I’m not that browser proud. Give it a week or two and its fallen off the bottom!!!
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Is there another place where address information is kept? I have this recurring issue that some old (two years old) addresses are kept, and even after I clean history and cache… they still remains. I think it’s got to do with some beta version I once installed, but I still haven’t found it.
using
Marc-O, Opera stores it’s history in a file named global.dat. Just delete that file, and delete opera.dir, and you shouldn’t have any more things hidden in your history. You might also be able to use the “Delete Private Data” tool (available in the “Tools” menu).
using
Thanks GT500…
but
did all of that, and still these ghost urls are hanging around… From what I see, these are about two years old, so that would put me with…. version 8/8.5 perhaps?
I think the last option will be to grep all my HD with some of the urls to find where these are located!
using
Hmm, I have no addresses in the dir file, but if you press one letter, say e, there is still some addresses I can’t delete.
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@Dorne: Clear history of visited pages
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@GT500
did it all. All clean – but no change, I still see the ghost addresses.
next step is to grep all my HD….
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I see. What me and Marc-O have is a different problem altogether. We have ghost addresses that do linger after clearing history of visited pages. Wierd..
using
Dorne and Marc-O, I’d just downloaded Opera to test my updated webpages with before putting them online (trying for as much browser compatibility as I can), but after reading of this ghost address problem that some people have, I’m *not* going to install Opera after all. I have nothing to hide and no top-secret files (and zero porno stuff or anything else controversial), but still the idea of Opera keeping things for years that can’t be erased short of a total hard-drive format or something, is just too creepy.
I did previously (last year, on a different computer, long since reformatted) test my pages with an older version of Opera, and that will have to suffice as far as browser compatibility goes.
I don’t want it on my new computer if it keeps records that can’t be deleted.
Okay maybe I’m a little paranoid, but this past year of trying to get used to all the security things in Windows (and Linux too, I don’t see much difference between them — they’re both very complicated OS’s and they both have ridiculously HUGE numbers of mysteriously-named files just to run the OS) is bad enough as it is, compared to the ancient primitive OS’s I was previously accustomed to for many years, where the user had pretty much control of what info was stored, and files (even “invisible” files on antique Macs) were easily able to be deleted, even by relatively non-expert users, if they chose to do so. If there were a way to delete this “ghost” stuff in Opera (running under Windows) I’d go ahead and install it. Otherwise, not. Dorne and Marc-O seem to indicate that the problem can’t be solved.
Well I guess I won’t be testing my site’s webpages for Opera compatibility then. Maybe it doesn’t matter, as the pages validate to W3C specs with no errors and the HTML code is relatively simple anyway (no Javascript, no fancy stuff) but it would have been nice to test the sliced images etc., for compatibility with new versions of Opera. (I use sliced images as part of a somewhat admittedly simple-minded strategy to make it just a little bit less easy for low-life thieves to hotlink my images and steal my bandwidth, used in combination with .htaccess — unless they want to steal the whole code, but I haven’t seen anyone motivated/ non-lazy enough to try that yet).
I suppose I’ll have to rely on Browsercam or something, for Opera compatibility-checking. I’ve never personally known anyone who used Opera anyway, and I haven’t had an Opera browser show up in my web logs user-agent thing in many years, but I do like to maintain compatibility with as many browsers (both old ones *and* the very newest ones too) as possible, just for the principle of the thing if nothing else.
I’ve never been too thrilled about sites that only work in one or two browsers, but break in other browsers. That’s not what the web should be about.
Maria
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@Maria
the ghost addresses is a very remote problem, in my case, probably due to two opera installations on the same machine (a proper release and a beta version) at the same time.
As well as I can see, the ghost history dates to that time.
I’m pretty confident that the current version of opera, with a normal simple installation, will give you the privacy satisfaction that you need.
You just have to test it, you know, check if it’s not keeping this history, so you can put your fears to rest. Opera is a major browser, and of great quality. This is a pretty remote bug and I’m convinced this issue (whatever it is) doesn’t exist anymore, at least, for the logging part.
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I think it may have something to do with the bookmarks, so I think that’s why it never went away. It’s a mistake on my part.
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I know this is late to the party but I had the same problem of ‘phantom’ addresses getting retained in the history. I cleared all history/cache items in the browser but when entering an address in the address bar, it still would try to use the ‘guess-ahead’ feature and tons of years-old address were still present. Ex: After typing “a”, it would bring up a list of tons of addresses with “a” in it. Here’s what I found:
1) I uninstalled, removed all opera program directories, reinstalled and still had the problem. So, after doing an uninstall, I ended up having to go to the app data directory (C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application Data\ AND C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data) and delete the Opera directory.
2) After deleting ALL opera data from both the program directory and the app-data directories and reinstalling, the phantom history entries no longer appeared.
3) All bookmarks are included in this ‘history search’ list. I didn’t realize that at first. Upon a fresh install bookmarks are imported from IE / FireFox and thus I was seeing addresses even on a new install. But, I was now only seeing bookmarks and not year-old entries.