historoo vs Chrome’s own history
Checked 26 October 2026. We make historoo, so weigh what we say about it accordingly.
Chrome’s history is good at one thing: finding a page when you remember its title or its address. historoo is for the other times, when what you remember is a picture, a video or a headline, and not where it was.
The short version
- Use Chrome’s history when you remember words from the page’s title, or the site. It’s built in, it’s free, and it goes back about 3 months.
- Use historoo when you remember what you saw: “the red car”, “that latte art video”, “the cat on the new chair”. It saves the pictures, videos and headlines you actually looked at, and searches them by what they show.
They don’t replace each other. historoo doesn’t change or delete Chrome’s history, so you can use both.
Side by side
| Feature | Chrome history | historoo |
|---|---|---|
| Find a page by its title or address | Yes | Yes |
| Find a picture by what it shows, like “cat” or “red car” | No | Yes |
| Find a video from words spoken in it (its captions) | No | Yes |
| Search with a picture: “More like this” and “Where have I seen this?” | No | Yes |
| Words written inside pictures, like a screenshot or a menu | No | With Pro |
| How far back | About 3 months | The last 7 days free. With Pro, as long as you like |
| History from before you installed it | Yes, it’s built in | No, historoo starts saving when you install it |
| On all your computers | Page links, if you sync Chrome | With Pro, through your own Google Drive, encrypted |
| Where it’s kept | On your computer, and in your Google account if you sync | On your computer. Pro’s sync copy is encrypted before it reaches your own Drive. We never see it. |
| Cost | Free | Free. Pro is free during the beta |
What Chrome’s history is good at
Press Ctrl+H (or ⌘+Y on a Mac) and type a word. Chrome looks through the titles and addresses of the pages you’ve visited, grouped by day. If you remember “it was on the Guardian” or “the title had ‘sourdough’ in it”, that’s the quickest way back. It needs nothing installed, and if you’re signed in to Chrome with sync on, it covers your other devices too.
Chrome also has an AI history search, under Settings › AI innovations. Once you turn it on, it keeps the text of pages you visit from then on and lets you describe a page in your own words. Google says it’s only available in the US, with Chrome in English, and it shows up to three best matches.
Where Chrome’s history runs out
Most of what you remember about something you saw online isn’t its title. You remember the photo, the colour of the car, the dog in the video, a line from a headline. Search Chrome’s history for “cat” and it only finds pages with “cat” in the title, not the photo of a cat on a page called “r/aww”.
That’s the gap historoo fills. While you browse, it saves the pictures, videos and headlines that were on your screen for at least a second, and reads what each picture shows on your computer. Type “cat” and every cat you saw comes back, day by day, with the page you saw it on.
Privacy
Both keep your history on your computer. Chrome can also keep it in your Google account if you sync. historoo never sends your history to us: there’s no account needed for Free, and Pro’s sync goes to your own Google Drive, encrypted on your computer first with a passphrase only you know. It skips incognito windows, sign-in, checkout and payment pages, and sensitive kinds of site like banking and health, unless you turn them on. The privacy policy has the details.
Try historoo alongside Chrome’s history
It’s free, needs no account, and leaves Chrome’s own history exactly as it is.