Swabby - How it works? [SOLVED] Topic is solved

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fatboy
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Swabby - How it works? [SOLVED]

Unread post by fatboy » 2023-01-09, 16:00

Good Day folks,

I am looking for a history cleaner that cleans my history upon browser startup. Yes, I know one can set a browser to forget history, but I also prefer loading my previous session and thus can't use this forget history option. Thus far, Swabby looks like the thing I am looking for.
Anyway, I am getting mixed results using Swabby, and some of the setting are counter intuitive?

Let us look at the image below:
swabby.jpg
1) Swabby is set to automatic clean every day. - This makes me believe that it will execute itself once every 24 hours, or once every calendar date?
2) The confusing part is "Remove entries viewed three times or less, which means it will keep entries that have been viewed more than three times? I want all entries removed, should make this a large number, like 10 or so?
3) Another confusing part is the last point: Prevent history from the last 3 days from being deleted, but swabby runs every day? This don't make sense, since it will then run three times (three days) and only clean once? Shouldn't this entry be equal to option 1's number of days?

Thank You for your time.
Last edited by fatboy on 2023-01-09, 21:52, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Swabby - How it works?

Unread post by Moonchild » 2023-01-09, 18:39

  1. Once every 24 hours (if the browser is running)
  2. History keeps track of how often an entry has been viewed (page visits). This setting is there to prevent entries from being removed that you visit often, but not necessarily very regularly. i.e. if it's a page you have visited a lot in the past, it will be protected from removal. If you want the extension to ignore that factor, then yes, you should make this a (very) large number.
  3. There's no conflict here. How often the "cleaning process" runs doesn't influence what remains protected. This setting is to prevent very recent page/site visits from being removed, regardless of how often you have visited them.
The 2 latter settings work in tandem: it allows you to retain history that you have visited recently OR have visited often. Both provide protection from deletion based on a different factor.

Does that help explain how this works or do you need a practical example? (I'd rather not, it would take a lot more time)
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Re: Swabby - How it works?

Unread post by fatboy » 2023-01-09, 21:51

Hi Moonchild,

Thank You for the great explanation!

This topic is now solved
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Re: Swabby - How it works? [SOLVED]

Unread post by Lucio Chiappetti » 2023-04-14, 13:25

I kept this on the todo list for a long time. I wonder if Swabby can be used to achieve my modified desired behaviour case. I achieved the desired behaviour case using Expire history by day (EHBD) but this is no longer applicable.
The latter case applied to my office machine when: (1) I went to work almost all days; (2) I kept the machine logged on for weeks; (3) and switched on virtually forever.
So setting the single parameter of EHBD to 2 days meant I had in the history the sites visited "Today" and "Yesterday", and all the rest was junked.

This is no longer applicable neither to my office machine (I go to office just 1-2 day per week, and usually log out) nor ot my home machine (which is switched on at the beginning of the day and off in the evening). What I would like is, for the home machine, to have just the site history of "Today" and "Yesterday" (irrespective of the fact Pale Moon is restarted at least once per day due to the power cycle). For the work machine I could possibly use a slightly longer time span. I suppose I should use the Swabby "manual" mode (will it run automatically at each restart ?) ... is that correct ?

Note that in "global" Pale Moon preferences I have set "use custom setting for history", "remember browsing and donwload history", "remember search and form history", "allow sites to store cookies" accept third party cookies=From Visited, Keep until=I close Pale Moon (and in addition I run Cookies Exterminator), "clear history when Pale Moon closes" (with only browsing and donwload history, cookies, active logins, cache ticked).
Will they retain priority over Swabby (i.e. not clean things like form search, saved logins, nosquint stuff etc.) ? And/or should I adjust them (I suppose that unticking "browsing and donwload history" might make EHBD work also in the modified desired case")
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