As you browse the internet, almost every website you visit secretly drops a tiny text file called a “cookie” onto your computer’s hard drive. These cookies are what allow a website to remember your login information, keep items in your shopping cart after you close the tab, and track your browsing habits to serve you targeted advertisements.
While cookies are generally harmless and make the internet significantly more convenient, they can occasionally become corrupted, causing websites to crash or load improperly. Furthermore, if you are concerned about your digital privacy and want to stop advertising networks from tracking you across the web, you must regularly clear your cookies.
Google Chrome makes it incredibly easy to delete all your cookies at once, or selectively delete cookies for a single problematic website.
Method 1: How to Clear All Cookies (The Nuclear Option)
If you are experiencing widespread glitches across multiple websites, or if you simply want a fresh start for privacy reasons, you should clear all cookies simultaneously. Warning: Doing this will immediately sign you out of every single website on the internet. You will need to type your passwords back in the next time you visit them.
- Open the Google Chrome browser.
- Click the three vertical dots in the top right corner of the window.
- Select Settings from the drop-down menu.
- In the left-hand sidebar, click on Privacy and security.
- In the main window, click on Clear browsing data.
- A small pop-up window will appear. First, look at the Time range drop-down menu at the top. To completely wipe your browser clean, change this to All time.
- Ensure the box next to Cookies and other site data is checked. (You can also check “Cached images and files” to free up hard drive space, but you may want to uncheck “Browsing history” if you want Chrome to remember the websites you’ve visited).
- Click the blue Clear data button.
The process will take a few seconds. Once finished, your browser is completely free of tracking cookies.
Method 2: How to Clear Cookies for One Specific Website
If only one specific website is broken (for example, your bank’s login page keeps crashing, but every other website works perfectly), you do not need to nuke your entire browser and sign out of everything else. You can target the specific cookies for that one broken site.
- Open Chrome and navigate to the specific website that is causing you trouble.
- Look at the URL address bar at the top of the screen. Just to the left of the website’s address (the
https://), you will see an icon that looks like two horizontal sliders (the Tune icon). Click it. - A drop-down menu will appear. Click on Cookies and site data.
- Click on Manage on-device site data.
- A small window will appear displaying a list of all the tracking cookies currently operating on that specific page.
- Click the Trash Can icon next to every item in the list.
- Click Done.
A message will appear below the address bar stating, “To apply your updated settings to this site, reload this page.” Click the blue Reload button. The website will refresh, forcing it to download a completely fresh, uncorrupted set of cookies, which usually resolves the login error immediately.