How to Delete Site Specific Cookies in Chrome for Mac

Jul 2, 2016 - 10 Comments

Chrome icon

If you’re a Chrome web browser user, you may find yourself wanting to delete a specific website cookie (or cookies) from the browser. The benefit to removing a site specific cookie is that you don’t have to clear all web data and caches, you can target a specific cookie as needed to remove and clear. This can be very helpful for troubleshooting websites, removing traces of a visit, clearing out stubborn site settings, and many web developers in particular use this technique often.

We’re going to show you how to target site specific cookies to delete in Chrome, this is demonstrated in Chrome for Mac OS X but it works the same in other versions of Chrome for Windows and Linux too.

How to Delete Specific Cookies in Chrome for Mac OS X

You can remove a specific website cookie from Chrome by doing the following:

  1. Open Chrome if you have not done so already, then pull down the “Chrome” menu and select “Preferences” to open chrome://settings/ as a URL
  2. Scroll down and choose “Show advanced settings”, then go to the “Privacy” section and choose “Content settings…”
  3. Remove specific cookies from Chrome

  4. Under the ‘Cookies’ section, click on “All cookies and site data…”
  5. Remove cookies from Chrome

  6. Locate the site cookie(s) you want to delete, use the Search box if you want not quickly find a specific site URL to remove the cookie(s), then select the site and click the (X) button to delete cookies for it
  7. Delete specific cookies in Chrome

  8. Repeat as necessary to delete other specific site cookies, then click on “Done” and use Chrome as usual

You’ll notice that when removing a cookie for a specific site you can also identify which cookies are placed.

If you’re removing a specific sites cookie for testing purposes, you’ll likely want to close the existing browser window and open a new one rather than simply refresh the page.

Keep in mind you can avoid cookie placement and cache generation in the first place by using the Chrome Incognito Mode private browsing feature.

How to Delete All Cookies in Chrome

You can also choose to remove all cookies from Chrome, though this will log you out of websites with saved credentials like web mail and social media:

  1. Pull down the “Chrome” menu and choose ‘Preferences’
  2. Scroll down to “Privacy” and select “Content settings…”
  3. Under the ‘Cookies’ section, click on “All cookies and site data…”
  4. Click the “Remove All” button to delete all website cookies from Chrome

Delete all cookies from Chrome

Keep in mind that this is targeting the removal of cookies only, whether on a site specific basis, or whether you’re removing all cookies in Chrome. This does not remove general web data from Chrome, though you can clear cache, web history, and web data from Chrome with this guide if that is desired.

This covers the desktop side of things with Chrome for Mac, Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS, but remember you can also remove Chrome cookies and browsing history on iPhone and iPad too if need be. And for those who aren’t Chrome users, you can always clear cookies in Safari for Mac as well.

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Posted by: Paul Horowitz in Tips & Tricks

10 Comments

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  1. tensan says:

    Chrome what the heck. You removed the feature for highlighted/checkboxing multiple individual cookies. Now every damn time I scroll down to remove one, it auto-scrolls all the way to the first cookie on top of the list, then I have to scroll ALL the way down to check the other cookies. There are cookies I have to keep for finances and accounting software.

    WAT THE HECK GOOGLE.

    EVERY DAMN UPDATE THESE STUPID COMPANIES DO MAKE THINGS WORSE.

    The dropdown list menu in Microsoft office was FAR better. The old windows media player that had the left tab come out of the media player box serving as the drop down playlist/song list as well as the tab below the player media box that served as the equalizer was simple and efficient. Every new version of skin was absolute garbage.

  2. David says:

    All or nothing.
    This is useful but it would be even more useful if there was a way of selecting multiple cookies and deleting them in one go. My cache has hundreds of cookies, many I don’t recognise. On my Mac when I click on the bin icon to delete an unwanted cookie it then goes back to the beginning and I have to scroll down again. So the only option apart from delete all is scroll, delete, scroll delete, scroll delete etc ad nausium. So much for computers making like easier…

    • Andrea says:

      David, EXACTLY! It’s very annoying that you can’t select multiple cookies (or select all then DEselect the ones you actually want to keep, so you don’t get logged out of mail and social media) then delete all at once. I’d even put up with deleting select ones one at at time IF it didn’t pop you back to the top making you start all over. Very frustrating. I may just have to delete all and re-log back into certain sites.

  3. Valerie says:

    My screen looks nothing like that. There doesn’t appear to be a way to only delete specific cookies, no search box.

    • Dan says:

      Valerie, it looks like Google must have changed it in the last couple of months. After running into the same thing and a few hours of research, I agree – think the individual deletion is now gone. :-/

  4. asdfasdf says:

    this info is great, lol

  5. john doe says:

    Is there any extension in Safari or Chrome Mac, that automatically blocks site-specific cookie? Not all cookies, but site – specific cookie for a pre configured set of websites?

    thanks

  6. arnie says:

    Works similarly in Firefox and Safari. Why the Chrome only instructions?

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