How to clear cookies in Chrome, Safari, Edge and Firefox (and keep your logins)

Cookies are small files websites store in your browser. Some are useful: they keep you logged in or remember what’s in your basket. Many aren’t for you at all. They let advertising and data companies recognise your browser as you move around the web. Here’s how to clear cookies in every major browser, how to clear them for just one site, and how to remove only the tracking cookies without logging yourself out.

How many cookies are we talking about?

We measured it. The Browser Monster Index opens popular UK websites in a fresh browser three times (doing nothing, clicking reject, clicking accept) and counts the cookies each visit leaves behind.

So one news homepage, accepted once, can leave hundreds of cookies, most of them belonging to companies other than the site you visited. The sites setting the most after “Accept” were all news sites: birminghammail.co.uk, spectator.co.uk, theweek.com, heraldscotland.com and cityam.com, each over 400.

How to clear cookies in Chrome

On a computer (Windows, Mac, Chromebook)

1. Press Ctrl+Shift+Delete (Mac: ⌘+Shift+Delete), or open the three-dot menu → Delete browsing data.
2. Pick a time range. Choose All time to clear everything.
3. Tick Cookies and other site data. Untick anything you want to keep, such as browsing history.
4. Click Delete data.

Just one website

1. Three-dot menu → Settings → Privacy and security → Third-party cookies.
2. Choose See all site data and permissions.
3. Search for the site, click Delete next to it, then confirm.

Quicker: on the site itself, click the icon to the left of the web address → Cookies and site data → manage or delete them.

On Android

1. Open Chrome and tap the three-dot menu → Delete browsing data.
2. Tap More options, choose Cookies and site data and a time range.
3. Tap Delete data.

Deleting cookies while you’re signed in to Chrome doesn’t sign you out of your Google Account.

How to clear cookies in Safari

On iPhone and iPad

1. Open Settings → Apps → Safari.
2. Tap Clear History and Website Data, choose a timeframe, then Clear History.

To keep your history and clear only cookies and cached data: Settings → Apps → Safari → Advanced → Website Data → Remove All Website Data → Remove Now. You can also swipe left on one site in that list to delete just its data. If the button is greyed out, Screen Time content restrictions may be switched on.

On a Mac

1. In Safari, choose Safari → Settings (called Preferences on older Macs) → Privacy.
2. Click Manage Website Data.
3. Select sites and click Remove, or click Remove All.

How to clear cookies in Microsoft Edge

1. Click … → Settings → Privacy, search, and services.
2. Under Clear browsing data, click Choose what to clear.
3. Pick a time range, tick Cookies and other site data, then Clear now.

For one site: in the same settings, go to Cookies → See all cookies and site data, search for the site, click the arrow next to it and choose Delete. Ctrl+Shift+Delete also works in Edge.

How to clear cookies in Firefox

1. Open the menu → Settings → Privacy & Security.
2. In Cookies and Site Data, click Clear Data….
3. Make sure Cookies and site data is ticked, then click Clear.

For one site, click Manage Data… in the same section, search for the site, click Remove All Shown, then Save Changes.

How to clear tracking cookies but stay logged in

This is the reason most people don’t clear cookies: wiping everything signs you out of email, shopping and banking. But your logins live in a handful of first-party cookies. The tracking cookies, such as Google’s IDE on doubleclick.net, Meta’s _fbp or Microsoft’s MUID, belong to other companies, and you can remove those on their own.

Browser Monster lists every cookie in your browser, grouped by website or by the company behind it, with what it’s for and how long it lasts (“this one lasts two years”). You can delete all of one company’s cookies in one go, across every site, and leave the rest alone.

How to stop cookies coming back

Clearing cookies is a clean-up. Without changing anything else, they’ll be back as soon as you browse again. To keep the count down:

1. Reject cookie banners. The difference is 87 cookies vs 11. Browser Monster can reject them for you automatically.
2. Block third-party cookies. Chrome: Settings → Privacy and security → Third-party cookies → Block third-party cookies. Safari blocks cross-site tracking by default.
3. Check a site before you trust it. Some sites keep tracking you after you reject. Look them up on Check a site.
4. Use a private window for one-off visits. Its cookies are deleted when you close it.

Quick answers

Should I clear cookies regularly?

Clearing tracking cookies every few weeks limits how long companies can follow one identifier. Clearing everything often is more hassle than it’s worth for most people; deleting tracking cookies by company gets most of the benefit.

What’s the difference between clearing cookies and clearing cache?

Cookies are small records sites use to remember you. The cache is saved copies of pages and images to make sites load faster. Clearing the cache doesn’t remove tracking cookies, and clearing cookies doesn’t free much space.

Will clearing cookies stop all tracking?

No. Some trackers recognise your device without cookies, through fingerprinting. We saw fingerprinting scripts on 36% of the UK sites we checked. Clearing cookies still cuts off the most common way you’re followed.

What is a third-party cookie?

A cookie set by a company other than the site in your address bar, usually an advertising or analytics company whose code the site loads. Because the same company is on many sites, its cookie can link your visits together. See who owns a tracking domain in our tracker lookup.