Playing a lot with my Nexus 6, I came to want to try Chrome out a bit, for a change from Firefox. And I stumbled on what I consider a very big problem.
All my browsers, I set up to clear history, cache, cookies, etc, as soon as I stop using them. Be it for pr0n, bank managing, or mere general hygiene, I just want the browser to start fresh every time I launch it (I only keep bookmarks and some selected passwords).
Now, with Chrome, there doesn't seem to be any real way to wipe all the crap when exiting the browser. So I started playing with deleting of history, recent tabs and cookie files in /data/data/com.android.chrome/app_chrome, triggered by recent app swipe out (process stop) detection in Tasker. And it worked, for some time.
Problem, after having swiped Chrome out, deleted history files, and checked the history and recent tabs indeed seemed wiped, when tapping on the clock history icon, on the lower right part of the empty home page, then tapped on display whole history (translated from my language; YMWV). But OCD striked out, and I went back to the empty home page, to repeat the same process again. And again...
Until I ended up with the history appearing back, out of seemingly nowhere. So I wiped everything in the app itself (clear browser data), which works OK everytime. And now disconnected the phone from data before wiping the history and co files. And then went back to the history icon routine: now, without data, the history doesn't appear back. Then, I activated data anew, went on the repeated history checking, and bang: history appears right back...
So, when one tampers when Chrome history and co files, it seems Chrome restores those from the Internet, most probably from Google. Even though I set web history to off in my Google settings... Also tried History Cleaner Pro for root app, and end up with the same exact behaviour from Chrome. For what is worth, I use latest everything, factory 5.0.1, rooted, up to date Nexus 6.
Seriously: what's that crap?!?! Do you observe the same behaviour? Do you know of a way to teach hygiene to Chrome? Not sure I'll be touching the thing again though, even with a barge-pole... There may be a way to clean Chrome (would it be manually, in the app itself, which works as far as displaying information from previous sessions), but this experience tends to make me believe Chrome will save the history and all kind of crap at Google's, even if it doesn't display it anymore in the browser, even when you ask Google not to manage your history. And I surely won't have that. Back to Firefox, I am.
