Clear Bash History

A subject clears bash terminal command history to prevent executed commands from being reviewed, disclosing information about the subject’s activities.

The Command Prompt on Windows only stores command history within the current session, once Command Prompt is closed, the history is lost.

On Linux-based operating systems different terminal software may store command history in various locations, with the most common being /home/%username%/.bash_history. Using the command history -c will clear the history for the current session, preventing it from being written to .bash_history when the session ends.

On MacOS the Terminal utility will write command history to /Users/%username%/.zsh_history or /Users/%username%/.bash_history based on the operating system version.