Internet, Networking, & Security > Browsers 97 97 people found this article helpful How to Clear Cookies and Cache in Chrome Open Chrome's privacy and security settings to erase cookies from all sites or specific sites By Marziah Karch Marziah Karch Writer Michigan State University Emporia State University Marziah Karch is a former writer for Lifewire who also excels at Serious Game Design and develops online help systems, manuals, and interactive training modules. lifewire's editorial guidelines Updated on November 14, 2023 Reviewed by Jon Fisher Reviewed by Jon Fisher Wichita Technical Institute Jonathan Fisher is a CompTIA certified technologist with more than 6 years' experience writing for publications like TechNorms and Help Desk Geek. lifewire's editorial guidelines In This Article Expand Jump to a Section Delete All Cookies Delete Cookies From Specific Sites Why Websites Use Cookies Trending Videos Close this video player What to Know Press the three dot menu. Select Settings > Privacy and security > Clear browsing data.Next, choose an option from the Time range menu. Select the items you want to delete, then press Clear data.Individual sites: Privacy and Security > Site settings > View permissions and data stored across sites. Press the trash icon next to the site. This article explains how to delete the small files Google Chrome stores, called cookies, from your computer across all sites and for individual ones. Instructions in this article apply to the desktop version of Google Chrome for all operating systems. How to Clear Cookies in Chrome The process is similar to clearing the cookies in most browsers. Follow these steps to delete cookies in Chrome and clear the browser cache: Select the three dots in the upper-right corner of Chrome, then select Settings from the drop-down menu. Select Privacy and security from the left-side menu, then choose Clear browsing data. Next to Time range, select the menu to pick how far back to remove cache and cookies. For example, pick All time to delete all of this data. Another way to access this screen is with a keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+Del (Windows) or Command+Shift+Del (on macOS). Select which data you want to delete, then select Clear data. Don't remove anything you might want to keep, such as browsing history. How to Clear Cookies From Individual Sites in Chrome If you don't want to remove all your data, you can delete cookies for specific websites in Chrome. This process is similar to the steps outlined above. Select the three dots in the upper-right corner of Chrome, then select Settings from the drop-down menu. Open the Privacy and security section from the left side of the page, then select Site settings. Select View permissions and data stored across sites. Find the website you want to erase cookies for. You can use the search bar or the sort menu to change up the results. Select the trash icon next to the website. As you can see in this screenshot, there are multiple trash icons. We're erasing all of this site's data, but you could just as easily clear only the cookies by pressing the trash icon next to the entry that mentions cookies. Why Websites Use Cookies Websites commonly use cookies to track browsing habits and target ads. This is usually a harmless process. However, in some situations, cookies can allow hackers to access your online accounts. Clearing the cookies in Chrome permanently removes them from your computer so the cookies can't be used that way. The cached files used by Chrome are helpful in ways similar to cookies. However, the Chrome cache can become corrupted and cause page-loading issues. Cache files take up space on a hard drive, affecting your device's performance. When you erase cookies, cached files, history, and other components saved in Chrome, the browser won't work precisely the same afterward. For example, you will be logged out of websites that rely on that data, and any history suggestions that come up when you type in the navigation bar are also cleared. Why Online Ads Follow You Around the Web Was this page helpful? Thanks for letting us know! Get the Latest Tech News Delivered Every Day Subscribe Tell us why! Other Not enough details Hard to understand Submit