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Is there a program that will track or record visited websites? Not merely browser history, not merely a collection of cryptic URL's and not a list of visitors to a website: that is, not the standard built-in history of visited websites, but something along the lines of the abandonware program "Elephant Tracks" that generated a full-text search of all visited websites. See, https://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/02/technology/news-watch-this-elephant-can-remember-all-of-those-lost-web-pages.html (https://archive.is/IjQEc). Something along the lines of desktop search for a user's web history.

Edit: (Two months later) Windows announced the Recall program, available for its new Surface laptops, which not only will keep track of websites, but everything else that you have done. Not clear whether this functionality will be rolled out generally to Windows 11.

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    Don't most browsers already have this, generally called 'history'?
    – Jeff Zeitlin
    Commented Mar 5 at 12:37
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    No. Browser history only records URL's. So if there's info not contained in the URL< you're SOL. There is a discontinued program called Elephant Tracks, looking to see if there's anything still maintained.
    – user26732
    Commented Mar 8 at 22:19
  • What else beside URLs are you expecting to find in a "list of websites that a user has visited"? The browsers do segregate the history by user - that is, you have to be logged in as the user, or else know where the browser stores its history for each user, to be able to access a particular user's history. If you're looking for something different, you'll need to clarify this and provide far more information.
    – Jeff Zeitlin
    Commented Mar 11 at 11:49
  • A full-text index of web sites visited, like Elephant Tracks. A website basically is html (yes, it's Javascript and Rust and static site generators) but the html text portion is small. A program could track this information and keep a database making it easier to find a website previously visited. See: nytimes.com/1998/07/02/technology/… {archive.is/IjQEc}
    – user26732
    Commented Mar 12 at 3:19
  • "For people suffering from internesia and those with Web bookmarks that can fill a disk drive, help may be on the way. Elephant Tracks, a new downloadable program (www.elephantsoftware.com), watches where a Web browser goes and allows users to retrace their footprints. The program was written by Ed Staub... Elephant Tracks indexes the words on Web pages that are viewed. When someone needs to look up an earlier page, the index for that page can be searched. ''It is an infallible extension to a fallible memory,''
    – user26732
    Commented Mar 12 at 3:21

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There are bunch of ways to achieve that. The easiest would be some browser extension. As the question doesn't specify one, here's something that should work in most, both Chromium-based and Firefox - SinglePage.

It attempts to save all pages as single HTML files to save memory. Optionally you can save assets such as images or videos encoded as base64, but I wouldn't recommend that, unless you got huge storage.

You can also choose to autosave all tabs in its settings.

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  • This is an interesting approach. Is there another?
    – user26732
    Commented Mar 19 at 20:12
  • Once again - lack of accuracy. If you desire another one, you should explain what you don't like about this one.
    – Destroy666
    Commented Mar 19 at 23:50
  • looking for a standalone program and not a browser extension.
    – user26732
    Commented Apr 1 at 15:28
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I believe Rewind.ai has this functionality, and probably even more, claiming to record "everything you’ve seen, said, or heard." I have not tried the software personally, but I've been considering it. Overall, I think you should give it a try if you're looking for something that helps you remember in the digital world.

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