Manage Cookies And Site Data In Chrome

Like Google as default home page, Google Chrome is default browser for most of users. There are lots of features like Speed, Security, Extensions, Clutter free design, and more that attracts us to use Chrome.

Cookie and Site data management is one of the advance features in Chrome. You have complete control over cookie permissions and site data in Chrome. All cookies are allowed by default but you can change this setting anytime. You will see a special icon at the end of address-bar when cookies have been set or blocked on the page.

Cookies are files created by websites you've visited that store browsing information, such as your site preference or profile information. There are two types of cookies :

First Party Cookies: Set by the site listed in the address bar.
Third Party Cookies: Cookies that belongs to other domain that have items like images or ads, embedded on the page.

You should be aware enough about the cookie settings because cookies can allow websites to track your every move on internet during visits to those sites. One should only allow the trusted sites to keep their cookies to be stored permanently on browser.

Cookies and Site Data Management in Chrome

You can delete all cookies or selected one from Cookies and site data window. Open Cookies and site data window by entering chrome://chrome/settings/cookies in address bar. Chrome will open the following window from where you can delete the selected cookies or all cookies.

Delete all cookies

To remove all cookies in a single go, click Remove All button. It will remove all the cookies from your Chrome.

Delete selected cookies

You can delete specific cookie by selecting or searching the site that issued the cookie and then click the “X” button on the extreme right of the cookie row.

Delete cookies created during specific time period

You can also choose to remove cookies that have been created during specific time period like, cookies created from the past hour, the past day, the past week, the last 4 weeks or the beginning of time. You can find this option by entering chrome://chrome/settings/ClearBrowserData in address bar.

Clear all cookies automatically

If you want Google Chrome to automatically delete cookies when you close all your browser windows, select the “Keep local data only until I quit my browser” checkbox in the Content Settings window. You can find this option by entering chrome://chrome/settings/content in address bar.

Cookie and site data exceptions

You can also make exceptions so that specific sites’ cookies are deleted whenever you close your browser. To control how cookies should be handled for a few specific sites or domains, open the Cookie and Site Data Exceptions window by entering chrome://chrome/settings/contentExceptions#cookies in address bar.

An example of managing exceptions in chrome

To add a rule in the Cookie and Site Data Exceptions window, follow these steps:

Click the Add a new exception pattern field and enter the domain name for which you want to create an exception.

To create exceptions for an entire domain, insert [*.] before the domain name (e.g.[*.]google.com. This will match account.google.com and drive.google.com or anything else that is followed by google.com).
You can also specify an IP address, an IPv6 address, or a non-http URL.

Use the menu to choose whether the site can set cookies. If you select Clear on exit, its cookies are deleted every time you close your browser.

You can also edit or remove exceptions using this window.

Private Browsing (Browsing Incognito mode) is still smart way to browse the internet if you don’t wish to store browsing history, cache and cookies once you are done with browsing. All latest browsers support the private browsing mode, to know more visit Enable Private Browsing in browser.