Google is breaking up its privacy settings. If you’ve ever dug through your Google Account wondering how to stop the company from saving your searches without also killing personalized recommendations, Google finally has an answer.
The company is rolling out two new settings: Search Services History and Personalized Recommendations. They’ll appear in your Google Account over the next few days, and they cover Search, Maps, Shopping, Hotels, Flights, Translate, and News.
What’s actually changing? Previously, Google managed both history saving and personalization through one switch: Web & App Activity. That meant turning off history collection also meant turning off personalization. Now the two are split. You can let Google save your searches for convenience while telling it not to use that data to tailor what you see. Or vice versa.
There’s a new wrinkle though. Google says it will now save media from your search interactions — images, files, audio, and video. This supports features like Google Lens visual searches and voice-based interactions. If Web & App Activity is already on for your account, the “Save Media” option will be enabled automatically too. You can turn it off, and delete individual media items, at any time.
Google Play is getting the same treatment. Even if you’ve never used it, you’ll see new “Play History” and “Personalization in Play” settings. Your existing auto-delete preferences from Web & App Activity will carry over.
The bottom line? More granular control, which is good. But if you currently have Web & App Activity enabled, you should check these new settings once they show up. Media saving being turned on by default might surprise people who didn’t realize their images and audio interactions would be stored.
