The Login Loop
Cookies are small pieces of data that websites store in your browser. They are essential for keeping you logged into your accounts, remembering your shopping cart items, and saving your site preferences. If Google Chrome is configured to aggressively clear your cookies every time you close the browser window, you will experience a frustrating “login loop.” Every single time you open Chrome, you will be forced to re-enter your username, password, and two-factor authentication codes for every website you use, from Gmail to Amazon. While clearing cookies on exit is a great security measure for public or shared computers, it is incredibly annoying for a personal device.
How to Disable Automatic Cookie Clearing
You can adjust Chrome’s privacy settings to ensure that cookies are retained between sessions, allowing you to stay logged into your favorite sites.
1. Open Google Chrome and click the three vertical dots in the top-right corner.
2. Select Settings.
3. In the left-hand navigation sidebar, click on Privacy and security.
4. In the main pane, click on Site settings.
5. Scroll down to the “Content” section and click on Third-party cookies (or “Cookies and site data,” depending on your Chrome version).
6. Look for a toggle switch labelled Clear cookies and site data when you close all windows.
7. Ensure this toggle is turned Off (it should be grey, not blue).
With this setting disabled, Chrome will save your session tokens. When you reboot your computer and reopen the browser, you will still be logged into all your accounts.
How to Exclude Specific Websites
If you actually like having your cookies cleared automatically for security reasons, but you just want to stay logged into one or two specific sites (like your personal email), you can create an exception.
Leave the “Clear cookies…” toggle turned ON. Scroll down to the bottom of that same page to the section titled Allowed to use third-party cookies (or “Sites that can always use cookies”). Click the Add button. Type the URL of the website (e.g., [*.]google.com). Chrome will now scrub all your web data upon closing, except for the specific sites you whitelisted.