How to Clear Chrome Cache, Browser History, & Cookies on iPhone & iPad

Aug 8, 2013 - 1 Comment

Chrome browser

Chrome is an excellent web browser alternative to Safari on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, and if you use the Chrome app you’ll probably want to know how to clear out the common browser data that gets stored locally in iOS. This includes data like web caches, cookies, site browsing history, and possibly saved login details and passwords.

Unlike clearing cache and browsing data from iOS Safari though, you won’t find Chrome’s options in the wider Settings app, and instead they are contained within the iOS Chrome app itself. That difference is fairly common with default Apple apps vs third party apps, but by no means does it indicate complexity, as clearing out browser data in Chrome for iOS is simple.

How to Clear Chrome Browser Data in iOS

This can be used to clear Chrome browser cache, history, cookies and site data, or all web data in Chrome for iOS. It is the same with each version of the Chrome iOS application.

  1. Open the Chrome app in iOS
  2. Chrome web browser for iOS

  3. Tap on the menu button, which looks a bit like this: “…” or [=] (depending on Chrome version) and is typically located in the right corner of the Chrome browser screen
  4. Navigate to and tap on “Settings”, then tap on “Privacy”
  5. Tap on “Clear Browsing Data”
  6. Tap “Clear Browsing Data”, or optionally, tap the individual options to “Clear Browsing History”, “Clear Cache”, or “Clear Cookies, Site Data”
  7. Optionally, you may wish to remove any saved login details and passwords by tapping on “Clear Saved Passwords” at the same settings screen
  8. Tap “Done” when finished to be back in the standard Chrome browser as usual

How to clear Chrome cache web data cookies and browser history on iPhone and Ipad

Clearing all data is a simple way to regain some privacy of browsing habits. This is particularly important if you share a single iOS device with others and you want to keep something secret, like vacation research or gift ideas, since without clearing the data someone may be able to recover those browsing activities by viewing history in the browser. You can also use Incognito or Private Browsing Mode to accomplish a similar goal, which doesn’t require clearing caches however.

Removing cookies and saved passwords is equally important, since web site login details may be stored that way for private accounts, be they for Facebook, Amazon, or web mail. At the moment, Chrome does not offer the ability to delete cookies just for specific sites, which is something that Safari does allow, so you’ll have to clear them all instead.

Another benefit to occasionally trashing all that locally stored data is that you may be able to free up some space on the iOS device by doing so.

Caches can add up over time and accumulate on the device, becoming a portion of the commonly misunderstood “Other” data that takes up space on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This is why deleting and reinstalling some apps can help to remove that Other data or at least slim it down, but with Chrome’s ability to directly clear out it’s own local data it prevents the need to do so with the Chrome app.

This feature has been around in Chrome for iPhone and iPad for a long time, but it may look different depending on what version of the app you are using and how old the device is. For example, here’s a much earlier version of Chrome for iOS and what the clearing browser data screen looked like then:

Clear Chrome browser data, cookies, and history in iOS

Remember you can also use private browsing modes, which do not store cache or cookies, and thus would not require clearing caches in Chrome just to maintain privacy.

Nonetheless, clearing caches is often needed by developers, web workers, and for other purposes, so it remains a valid and valuable bit of knowledge for Chrome on iOS and iPadOS.

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Posted by: Paul Horowitz in iPad, iPhone, Tips & Tricks

One Comment

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  1. Sumit says:

    great post. Keep doing good work

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