Why Are Cookies Important?
In web browsing, a “cookie” is a tiny text file that a website saves onto your computer. While cookies often have a negative reputation due to privacy concerns and targeted advertising, they are actually a fundamental part of how the modern internet functions.
Cookies are the reason a website remembers you. Without them, you would be forced to log in with your username and password every single time you clicked a new link on a website. Cookies keep you logged into your email, they remember the items you placed in your online shopping cart, and they save your dark mode preferences.
Apple places a heavy emphasis on user privacy, which means Safari aggressively blocks many types of cookies by default. While this is great for stopping advertisers from tracking you across the web, it can occasionally cause legitimate websites (especially banking portals, university login pages, or complex web apps) to break completely. If a website is endlessly asking you to log in or refusing to load properly, you likely need to enable cookies.
How to Enable Cookies in Safari
Because Safari is built directly into the Mac operating system, you control its behaviour through the main application preferences menu.
- Open the Safari web browser on your Mac.
- Look at the main menu bar at the absolute top of your screen (next to the Apple logo). Click the word Safari.
- Click on Settings from the dropdown menu. (If you are running an older version of macOS, this will be called Preferences).
- A new window will appear. Look at the row of icons across the top and click on the Privacy tab (it has an icon of a hand inside a blue circle).
- Look for the section labelled “Cookies and website data.”
- Ensure the checkbox next to Block all cookies is Unticked (empty). If it has a blue tick in it, Safari is completely blocking all cookies, which will break most modern websites.
Once you ensure that box is unticked, cookies are officially enabled. You can close the Settings window. You do not need to click a save button; the changes are applied instantly.
Understanding “Prevent Cross-Site Tracking”
Directly above the “Block all cookies” checkbox, you will see another option called Prevent cross-site tracking. This is Apple’s proprietary Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) system.
If this box is ticked, Safari allows “first-party cookies” (the essential cookies required for the website you are currently looking at to function properly) but aggressively blocks “third-party cookies” (the tracking codes placed by advertisers to follow you from site to site).
For 99% of Mac users, Prevent cross-site tracking should be left Ticked (On). This provides the perfect balance: it allows websites to function normally without letting data brokers harvest your browsing history.
How to Clear Existing Cookies
Sometimes, enabling cookies does not fix a broken website because the site has saved a corrupted or outdated cookie on your machine. In this scenario, you need to delete the old data and force the website to generate a fresh cookie.
- Go to Safari > Settings > Privacy.
- Click the button labelled Manage Website Data…
- A list of every website that has stored data on your Mac will appear. It may take a few seconds to load.
- You can either use the search bar in the top right to find the specific website that is broken, click on its name, and select Remove.
- Or, if you want a completely fresh start across the entire internet, click the Remove All button at the bottom of the window.
- Click Done.
Warning: Clicking “Remove All” will instantly log you out of every single website you are currently signed into. You will need to type your passwords again the next time you visit them.
