Example: I have passed by a location so I have the building located on my map (I can fast travel there) but I didn't explore it by the time I found it, hence it is "unvisited" in a sense.

How can I tell which locations I have actually "done" from the ones that I have only "found" if you understand my meaning.

I know that the game puts a "CLEARED" tag on the location on the map when you have explored it fully/killed everything there, sadly it goes away after a certain ingame time has passed and things respawn, removing the "CLEARED" tag.

Is really the only way to know for sure if you have been there or not to enter the area and see if you remember it or not? No other way?

Edit: just to clarifity what I want to do, I want to go to the locations I haven't explored yet, But I already have everything "found" on the minimap so it is very hard for me to tell which locations I haven't explored fully yet.

I'm assuming that I haven't done every building/location in the game yet but I could be wrong I suppose, it seems unlikely.

Dont think theres any way to rly know sorry unless you rember it, also the game a lot of unmarked locations as well so i am pretty sure you still have some exploring left to do

Yeah, the cleared tag isn't all that helpful. There are a number of places I've cleared out and the tag has never appeared for them in the first place. I'm pretty good at remembering the locations I have and have not explored so I guess its not too bothersome for me.

Still, a future option to mark locations when hovering over them on the map would be a nice feature to have.

Than you haven't cleared the location..
(missed a document, a relic, a hidden room, etc').

Honestly, good old remembering, or old school tactics like writing it down.

Well, I guess in worst case scenario I can play next playthrough with a rule to never find and leave a location without exploring it fully first. =)

My current level 94 character is totally overpowered anyways so the unexplored locations would sadly not pose much of a threat anymore, not even on Survival difficulty.

As someone who takes their time with every location they go to make sure every enemy is wiped out and every little room and thing of value is picked, I highly disagree with that. I even sometimes check the wiki and see I've basically seen, looked at, and collected everything a location has to offer and it still shows as uncleared.

One good example being the Rotten Landfill that has nothing but mole rats and a steamer trunk to loot and [CLEARED] still doesn't show. Another being Kendall Hospital, which I've gone through entirely twice.

I use an actual to-do app on my phone. I try not to get close enough to places I don't want to explore at that moment (the compass gives you a good estimation of when you're getting too close), but if I accidentally trigger one and it appears on my mini-map then I just jot it down in the app with an 'explore' tag. I use the app/list for many other in-game things too!

Challenge accepted!
Where is this location about?
I'll do my best to prove you wrong.

Not every location has a cleared flag. Some are never "CLEARED". When you use the application in the first link on my signature, you can hover over the location markers till a tooltip popup appears. It then tells you whether the location has a cleared flag or not. When it has one and it does not show up as CLEARED, you probably missed a boss enemy (in my experience a location is cleared when all boss enemies are eliminated. I had the case when I only eliminated one enemy, which was a legendary one, but left the other enemies intact, the location still got marked as cleared).

Edit: I actually plan to implement a simple note taking feature in my application so that you can annotate locations on the map.

I think the central north of the Commonwealth, up the road west of Lexington and south of some graveyard if I recall correctly. The issue with the Rotten Landfill may be some mole rats not ambushing you correctly and thus some may not come out of the ground. I suspected something similar with Dunwich Borer since the place is:

(Spoiler tags because I don't want to ruin the experience for others)

As for Kendall Hospital, its in the middle of Cambridge. That place I know I have cleared every inch of that building but the game thinks otherwise. Both during my own curiosity in exploring it and another time during a quest.

Essentially this in my case. I'm pretty good at remembering what places I've passed by and which one's I've popped into.

Unfortunately I'm not on PC, but it's good to know not every location can be cleared so I know I'm not going crazy. I remember having killed a boss enemy as well and the location showed up as clear despite some left over raiders as well.

I feel like there are locations to get 'cleared', but also locations that are ment to get respawned from time to time, where the 'clear' doesn't show up

I don't know, I remember having cleared locations before and the 'cleared' does show. Only to have return to those locations later and enemies have respawned, but the 'cleared' still remained. Examples being Super Duper Mart and National Guard Training Yard.

You just have to remember the locations yourself by doing your own note-taking. I have a lot of unopened locks and unhacked terminals throughout the wasteland because I haven't upgraded my lockpicking and hacking skills and am not going to upgrade them any time soon. So taking notes is the only way to remember those locations. Besides, I'm not sure if the game can tell visited and unvisited locations apart the way you intend to. Say you open a door to a warehouse, go in through the doorway a few feet, and come back out. Does that qualify as visited? On the flip side, if you have gone into every room and every floor in the warehouse and picked up every little thing, opened every locks, and hacked every terminal, but have not picked up a tiny little screwdriver somewhere! Should the game still mark the location as incomplete then? See, it's hard for the game to implement this. The easiest way for the game is just to mark locations you have found on the map.

Oh i would love to turn off cleared locations from the map or even locations of my choosing. I would also love to be the able to point multiple readable markers on the map and when you hover over the custome marker you can see the text you have written for it...better yet a small message box pops up over the map so you can see the message clearly with out those icons getting in the way

When it is the same as with Skyrim then only the enemies having a "Boss" location reference type are taken into consideration when determining the cleared state. When a location is "cleared" despite having living enemies running around, then they probably don't have this location reference type attached.

After reading this thread, I just happened to come across this interactive map. It lets you mark locations as "found" as you go.

But beware, this is the entire map including power armor locations and skill mags. So there may be spoilers for many of us.

http://fallout4map.com/