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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- You can no longer archive or hide orders from your Amazon history.
- Amazon recommends setting up Family accounts instead.
- Previously archived orders now show in your main history.
If you plan on doing some holiday shopping in next week’s Prime Big Deal Days, Amazon has quietly made a change you should know about — you can no longer archive, hide, or delete items from your order history.
I found this out for myself when I went to hide a present order from my Amazon history since my wife and I share an account. This isn’t a feature I used often, but for years around birthdays, our anniversary, or especially Christmas, I’d remove a purchase just so someone else wouldn’t accidentally see it.
When I tried to hide a purchase last week, the option wasn’t there.
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After doing some research, I found out the ability to archive an Amazon purchase no longer exists. I saw a reply from an Amazon representative saying the feature was gone in March of this year, and a Reddit post where Amazon reportedly said archived orders would start appearing in your main history as of Aug. 19, 2025, so it appears this change happened last spring.
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I didn’t see any official announcement, but I saw post after post after post from surprised users complaining about the absence of the feature. Since you can’t officially archive orders, what can you do to avoid ruined surprises?
How to hide Amazon orders without archive
It’s not clear why Amazon went this route. I’ve reached out to ask why the feature went away or to see if they recommend an alternative. In official responses I’ve seen to customers, the company says to set up Amazon Family to link accounts if you want to maintain separate order histories.
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To do this, you’ll need to have every person set up their own Amazon account and then add those to the main Prime subscription.
Amazon Family, the company explains, lets you share Prime benefits with someone who lives in your house. The biggest difference is that every member has their own account and their own order history, so surprises stay hidden.
If you go with this method, though, it means one person won’t be able to keep an eye on everyone’s purchases. Of course, it also means Amazon gets a great deal more user-specific data.
Source: www.zdnet.com
