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Is there a way to view the list of questions I have recently viewed?

When just browsing the site, I will often look at new questions that I can't answer but am interesting in knowing what the answer is. If there isn't an good answer yet, I'll then browse on to other questions. The problem I run into is that sometimes it is hard to go back and find question after a few minutes or hours. I can also think of other use-cases where I would find this useful.

I know I can tag questions as favorites and locate them in my profile. At the risk of sounding lazy, I find this to be too much work unless it is a question that I am really, really interested in.

It would be really handy if there was a way quickly see a list of last X (maybe 10) questions that I have viewed. For ease of access, it would be nice if this list was displayed in the side bar.

I don't see this functionality available, so I'm tagging this a feature request. If it already exists, I could use a nudge in the right direction on how to find it.

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4
  • Why not use your browser's history function?
    – bdonlan
    Feb 5, 2011 at 16:13
  • Look at these two as well because they seem to be duplicate of your question: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/69346/… and meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4719/add-answer-later-tab
    – Robert Koritnik
    Feb 5, 2011 at 17:34
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    @Robert: This is slightly different twist in that those would require a specific action by the user to put a question on his/her personal list. This would just keep track of the questions the user recently viewed without special action on the user's part.
    – poke
    Feb 5, 2011 at 20:21
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    Such an option would be a big time saver compared to trawling browser history.
    – Marc P
    Jan 24, 2013 at 11:11

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
10
  1. Ctrl - h
  2. Type stackoverflow.com
  3. Enter

Tested in Chrome and Firefox on windows. Safari and IE require extra effort to search history on Windows. Not tested on other browsers or operating systems.

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  • 9
    Not as nice as a "recently viewed" list provided by stack overflow itself, but is a reasonable workaround until you convince them that this feature will significantly improve stack overflow.
    – Pollyanna
    Feb 5, 2011 at 16:30
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    doesn't work for pages viewed from other locations
    – dan3
    May 6, 2015 at 9:25
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    I tried this but couldn't find the page I viewed last week. Also ctrl +h does not work on mac.
    – Schneems
    Jun 1, 2017 at 14:16
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    The only reason I googled this is because I was browsing SO on my phone, found a very interesting answer somewhere, then came back home and lost it. This is of no help in that case.
    – iuliu.net
    Nov 15, 2017 at 13:45
  • @iuliu.net You phone browser has a history as well, but I don't give instructions here how to access it. I'm sorry my answer doesn't meet your needs, perhaps you can ask on on the appropriate site on how to access your phone browser's history.
    – Pollyanna
    Nov 15, 2017 at 14:07
  • Hey, thanks! The question asked for a SO history. You provided the browser's history, which might do the same thing for ß% of the cases, but WON'T for the rest, in which me and other people may've found themselves in. There is a reason sites like YouTube have a 'History' section and don't just tell you to go check your browser's history. There could be different devices, different browsing modes, and a different design made specifically for that purpose.
    – iuliu.net
    Nov 16, 2017 at 9:29
  • @iuliu.net Correct! And the existing question an answer (marked as duplicate at the top of the question) already provides the answer - there isn't, and it's not likely to be implemented. Therefore I've provided a workaround, a way for those needing this functionality to provide it themselves.
    – Pollyanna
    Nov 16, 2017 at 12:29
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Flag the question as favourite and have them in the list of your favourites. Even for later reference when they're answered.

Edit

You can always order favourites by date added which would work exactly as you need it.

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  • 3
    After you've favorited more than a few dozen questions it becomes unwieldy to manage them and find anything in them. Further, I suspect the intent is to avoid opening 30+ windows during a research session, so chances are good that you would have to go back and clean up your favorites later once you figured out what you're really looking for.
    – Pollyanna
    Feb 5, 2011 at 16:53
  • @Pollyanna: I wonder what's the ordering of favourite questions? Chronological by question date or chronological by favouriting date? If it was later, your last questions would always pop up first in the list.
    – Robert Koritnik
    Feb 5, 2011 at 16:55
  • Your favorites can, in fact, be ordered by when you added them as a favorite, so it looks like your suggestion would work out pretty well, as long as you went back to clean them up later. They can be sorted by a number of other criteria as well.
    – Pollyanna
    Feb 5, 2011 at 16:58
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    @Pollyanna: or there could be a similar functionality to favourites like come back later... And this would probably be better. Especially if the page that lists these questions would have some kind of functionality like remove all questions older than X
    – Robert Koritnik
    Feb 5, 2011 at 16:58
  • @Pollyanna: Thanks for the ordering info. I don't really use favourites and I didn't check it before writing my comment about it.
    – Robert Koritnik
    Feb 5, 2011 at 17:04
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    You don't always know in advance which of the (sometimes many) questions viewed in a day you will want to come back to.
    – Marc P
    Jan 24, 2013 at 11:13

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