Over months or years of browsing, you have likely granted dozens of websites permission to access your webcam, microphone, physical location, and push notifications. While Google Chrome makes it easy to revoke these permissions for a single website by clicking the padlock icon in the address bar, finding and revoking permissions for dozens of forgotten websites one by one is incredibly tedious.
If you want to perform a complete privacy sweep and revoke all hardware and notification access across the entire internet, you do not need to uninstall the browser. Chrome includes a centralized privacy dashboard that allows you to reset all global site permissions in a single action, forcing every website to ask for your consent again the next time you visit them.
How to Reset All Site Permissions in Google Chrome
You can perform a mass reset of your permissions via Chrome’s Privacy and security settings.
- Open the Google Chrome browser.
- Click the three vertical dots in the top-right corner of the window and select Settings.
- In the left-hand navigation sidebar, click on Privacy and security.
- In the main window, click on Site settings.
- Under the “Recent activity” or “Permissions” section, scroll down and click on View permissions and data stored across sites.
- You will see a massive list of every website you have ever interacted with. At the very top of this page, look for the button labelled Clear all data.
- Alternatively, to only reset permissions without clearing cookies, you must click on individual permissions (like Location or Camera) under the main Site Settings page.
- To mass-reset a specific hardware permission (e.g., Camera), click on Camera.
- Scroll down to the “Allowed to use your camera” section. Click the trash can icon next to every website listed there to revoke their access instantly.
Once you have cleared the lists, your browser is secure. The next time you join a Google Meet call or use a web-based mapping service, the website will have to present you with a fresh pop-up asking for your explicit permission to access your hardware.