On your computer, open Chrome. At the top right, click More. Click More tools Clear browsing data. At the top, click the dropdown next to 'Clear the following items from.' Choose a time period, such as the past hour or the past day. Check 'Cookies and other site data.' Uncheck all the other items.
Chrome stores small files called cookies on your computer for a variety of reasons, one of which is to keep you logged in to your favorite websites. The browser also stores images and other files, called the cache, to make pages load faster when you revisit them. This article explains how to clear a single site of cookies or multiple sites at once.
Why Websites Use Cookies
Websites commonly use cookies to track your browsing habits and target ads to you. Often, this is a fairly harmless process. In some situations, however, cookies can even be stolen or faked and provide a way for a hacker to get into your online accounts. Clearing the cookies in Chrome deletes them permanently from your computer and prevents them from being used in those ways.
The cached files used by Chrome are often beneficial, too, much like cookies. However, the Chrome cache can become corrupted and cause page loading issues. They can also take up plenty of space on your hard drive, which can affect Chrome's performance and prevent you from using your hard drive for other things like music and video downloads.
Fortunately, Chrome makes it very easy to remove cached files and delete cookies. Through just a few clicks in the settings, you can start removing these files on your own schedule in just a minute or two, or even faster once you get the hang of it.
When you erase cookies, cached files, history, and other components saved in Chrome, remember that Chrome will not work exactly the same afterward. For example, any logged-in websites that rely on that data will be logged out. The history suggestions that come up when you type in Chrome's navigation bar will also be cleared. Before you delete any cookies, be certain you do not use them regularly. Often, clearing them from a specific site is a useful method and saves other sites that you use often from getting information dumped.
Open Chrome's Settings
The area in Chrome where you can clear the cache and delete cookies is located in Settings. Chrome has lots of settings, and the cookies and cache settings are not in the primary area shown when you launch Chrome's settings. To find and clear them, do the following:
- Select Customize and control Google Chrome denoted by the 3 vertical dots on the upper right-hand side of Chrome.
- Scroll to the very bottom of the page and select Advanced to expand Settings.
- Under Privacy and security, select Clear browsing data.
Decide How Much to Delete
There are a couple ways to clear the cache and cookies in Chrome. One method will delete all of the cookies and cache, while the other lets you pick which cookies to keep and which to remove.
- In Chrome, go to Customize and control Google Chrome > Settings > Advanced > Privacy and security > Clear browsing data.
- Decide whether to remove all cookies or just some of them.
- To delete all cookies, see the section Clear Everything below.
- To delete some cookies but keep others, see the section Delete Certain Cookies Only below.
Clear Everything (Clear All Cookies From All Sites)
If you're deleting every cookie and cached image/file in Chrome, you can pick how far back to remove them or you can delete everything Chrome has stored.
- Select the Basic tab.
- Choose an option from the Time range drop-down menu.
- To remove everything, pick All time, or pick anywhere from Last hour to Last 4 weeks to keep some of the more recent cookies and other data.
- Ensure that there are checks in all 3 boxes labeled Browsing history, Cookies and other site data, and Cached images and files.
Alternatively, you can select exactly what you want to delete by selecting the Advanced tab instead. Here's how:
- Select the Advanced tab.
- Choose an option from the Time range drop-down menu.
- To remove everything that you choose, pick All time.
- Place checkmarks in any or all of the list: Browsing history, Download history, Cookies and other site data, Passwords and other sign-in data, Autofill form data, Site Settings, or Hosted app data.Watch what you select. Deleting autofill form data, for example, will erase everything saved in forms, such as your name, email address, phone number, and payment information.
![How To Clear Cookies On Chrome How To Clear Cookies On Chrome](/uploads/1/2/6/2/126241730/538366875.png)
Similar to clearing the cache and cookies in other browsers, Chrome lets you jump right to these settings through a keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + Shift + Del in Windows and Command + Shift + Del in macOS.
Delete Certain Cookies Only (Clear Cookies From A Single Site)
Chrome stores cookies for each site individually, and you have full control over which ones get deleted.
- From the Privacy and security section, select Site Settings.
- Select See all cookies and site data.Notice the Keep local data only until you quit your browser option. If you enable it, Chrome will automatically delete this information each time you close out of the browser, saving you from having to repeat these steps often.
- A full list of every website storing cookies through Chrome is listed.
- Search or scroll through the list to find the website that's storing cookies you want to remove.
- Click the trash icon next to any website to remove that site's cookies and site data.
- To remove all the cookies and data from all the sites listed, click REMOVE ALL at the top of the page.
- You can also look at the details of individual cookies by selecting one, then on the next screen select the down arrow to see details.
- Or if you want to delete from a certain website, you can use Search cookies, then select Remove All Shown.
Cookies—what could be wrong with such deliciousness? Well, even a certain monster on Sesame Street is less into gluten these days. Maybe that's because his beloved snack food had its name co-opted back in the 1990s by the little data files that websites use to improve your experience...and track your activity.
Cookies get stored on your computer when you use a web browser. The cookie file gets read by the server on the other end of the connection. Most of the time, cookies are a good thing—without authentication cookies, you'd constantly be entering usernames and passwords as you visit websites, over and over, on every page. Cookies also make it possible for online shopping carts to work without losing all your items before purchase.
But, cookies can also be used to track you. When you visit a site, you may not get a cookie from just the server for that site, but also a tracking cookie from the advertisers on that site—that's called a third-party cookie. Those can be used to look at where you're going whenever you visit a new website—tracking your moves, so to speak. This has long had privacy advocates up in arms, even though cookies typically do not collect any personalized information.
The problem is, blocking or deleting all cookies is almost crippling to your web adventures. Yet letting every single cookie through compromises your privacy. So what do you do?
Cookie Control
One option is: nuke all existing cookies. Then you can take some control back. How you do it depends on the desktop or mobile browser you're using. Google Chrome and Firefox Quantum users, I'd suggest you install the Click&Clean extension and use it to take care of cookies.
But there are manual methods.
Take advantage of the built-in controls in each browser to limit the cookies you receive. At the very least, always block the third-party/advertiser cookies. It's not foolproof, as advertisers can find ways around that simple option, but it's a start. There are many extensions that help you control cookies on browser like Firefox and Chrome. Check out their respective web stores/repositories for options.
Google Chrome (Desktop)
Click the three-dot icon () menu in the upper-right corner to get the Chrome menu, and select History—or type 'chrome://history' without the quotation marks in the omnibox (aka the address bar). Click Clear browsing data on the left.
In the pop-up box, check off the third and fourth boxes to delete cookies and clear cached images and files. Just pick a timeframe from the menu at the top.
To manage the cookies in Chrome, type 'chrome://settings/content/cookies' in the omnibox. You can tell Chrome to allow data from local sites you actually visit, only keep data until you close the browser, or block cookies altogether. The best option: Block all third-party cookies. You can also set exceptions—if you block all cookies, you might to still allow them for, say, Amazon and NYTimes.com, just so you don't have to re-type your password all the time.
Click See All Cookies and Site Data to see a list of the cookies actually installed locally on your computer. You can go through them one by one and delete as desired. It's not a bad idea to just do a Remove All on cookies every few months, just to clear things out.
Google Chrome (Mobile)
Access the menu via the ellipsis menu () in the lower-right (iOS) or upper-right (Android), and select Settings > Privacy > Clear Browsing Data. Check off the section for cookies and tap Clear Browsing Data (iOS) or Clear Data (Android). That's all you can do; you don't get any granular controls over existing cookies and can't block third-party cookies alone.
Mozilla Firefox Quantum
Click the upper-right hamburger stack () and select Options > Privacy & Security. Go to Cookies and Site Data. Click Clear Data and then check Cookies and Site Data and hit clear to remove your entire cookie history. There's also a box to check to Delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed.
Back to Cookies and Site Data, select Manage Data if you want to choose which sites from which to remove cookies. Under Manage Permissions, create Exceptions to always (or never) accept cookies from select sites.
Firefox (Android)
Go to the three-dot menu () and select Settings > Privacy > Cookies. You get three choices: Enabled, Enabled Excluding 3rd Party, or Disabled. To erase all cookies, on the Privacy screen, check the box by Clear Private Data on Exit. You'll get another pop-up to pick Cookies & Active Logins, among other settings.
Firefox (iOS)
Tap the hamburger menu on the lower-right () and check off Tracking Protection to get started. To go deeper, select Settings > Tracking Protection, where you can select Basic or Strict. The latter is basically a private browsing mode. You can long-press on the URL bar while using Firefox to see how many trackers that site has running, and even disable tracking on individual sites.
But for true cookie control, go to Settings > Data Management > Cookies and turn them off. You can Clear Private Data at the bottom of the screen. Or click Website Data at the top to delete cookie data site-by-site.
Microsoft Edge
Internet Explorer is (mostly) dead, long live Microsoft Edge. To clear cookies, select the three-dot menu () > Settings > Clear browsing data. Some options will be pre-selected, but you can click or de-select the items you want to delete. Click Clear.
To manage cookies in the future, navigate to Settings > Advanced settings and scroll down to cookies. Click the drop-down menu and choose one of three options: Don't Block Cookies, Block Only Third-Party Cookies, or Block All Cookies. Or go back into Clear Browsing Data and click the link to Manage Permissions. That's where you can delete cookies site-by-site, or do a Clear All.
Safari (macOS)
By default, Safari is only taking cookies from sites you visit—not third-party cookies. You can make changes by going to the Safari menu (a gear icon) and selecting Preferences > Privacy and looking under Cookies and website data > Manage Website Data. From therepick the sites whose cookies you crush; Click Remove All > Remove Now to kill all cookies.
If you'd like to manage how Safari handles cookies, on that same Privacy tab you'll see an option to Block All Cookies.
To manage the cookies Safari will accept, click any site under Cookies and Website data to have Safari ask sites and third parties not to track you. Safari may ask every time, but it's up to individual websites whether they'll comply or not.
Safari (iOS)
With Safari, unlike other browsers, both desktop and mobile, you don't access the cookie settings by opening the browser itself. In iOS, go to Settings > Safari and toggle Block All Cookies to on.
When you want to kill all the cookies, choose Clear History and Website Data. To kill just select cookie data stored by websites (and keep your History), scroll down to Advanced > Website Data. You'll get a list of the sites storing the most data; at the bottom of the list click Show All Sites to see the full list. Delete the data for sites you don't recognize or trust; you'll sleep better. Or clear them all by clicking the bottom link: Remove All Website Data.