For users who share a computer, Microsoft Edge offers a powerful privacy feature that automatically scrubs all browsing data—including cookies, history, and cached files—every single time the browser is closed. This essentially mimics “InPrivate” mode, ensuring the next person who opens the browser cannot see what you were researching.
However, if you are the sole owner of a computer and you accidentally enabled this feature, it will cause immense frustration. You will be forcibly logged out of all your accounts (Gmail, Facebook, Twitter) every time you reboot your PC, and you will never be able to use the history tab to find a webpage you visited yesterday.
To retain your login sessions and build a historical record of your browsing, you must disable the auto-delete feature on exit.
How to Stop Edge from Clearing Data on Exit
You can turn this off in the Privacy settings menu.
- Open the Microsoft Edge browser.
- Click the three horizontal dots in the top-right corner.
- Select Settings from the drop-down menu.
- In the left-hand navigation sidebar, click on Privacy, search, and services.
- Scroll down to the section labeled “Clear browsing data.”
- Click on the button labeled Choose what to clear every time you close the browser.
- A new menu will appear with a list of data types (Browsing history, Cookies and other site data, Cached images, etc.).
- Turn Off the toggle switches next to every single item in this list.
Once disabled, Microsoft Edge will permanently store your cookies and history locally. The next time you close and reopen the browser, you will remain safely logged into all of your favorite websites.