How to Delete Cookies in Chrome and Edge (2026)

If you've been meaning to clear your browser cookies but weren't sure how, or weren't sure if you should, this guide covers both.

Why You Might Want to Delete Your Cookies

Cookies serve real purposes. They keep you logged into websites, remember your preferences, and make multi-step processes like shopping carts work. But they can also track your behaviour across the web, store data you didn't explicitly consent to, and gradually build up into a fairly detailed picture of your browsing habits.

Clearing cookies periodically removes tracking identifiers, fixes certain loading bugs, and logs you out of sessions you may have forgotten about.

How to Delete All Cookies in Chrome

1. Open Chrome and click the three dots in the top right corner
2. Go to Settings, then select Privacy and security
3. Click Delete browsing data
4. At the top, choose a time range. "All time" gives you a full clear
5. Make sure Cookies and other site data is checked
6. Click Delete data

That's it. You'll be logged out of most sites after this.

A Faster Way

You can also type chrome://settings/clearBrowserData directly into the address bar to jump straight to the dialog.

How to Delete All Cookies in Microsoft Edge

The steps in Edge are almost identical:

1. Click the three dots in the top right corner
2. Go to Settings, then Privacy, search, and services
3. Under "Clear browsing data", click Choose what to clear
4. Select a time range
5. Tick Cookies and other site data
6. Click Clear now

Deleting Cookies for a Specific Website Only

Sometimes you want to clear cookies from one site without logging out of everything else. Both Chrome and Edge let you do this.

In Chrome:

1. Open Settings and go to Privacy and security
2. Click Third-party cookies, then scroll to See all site data and permissions
3. Search for the site you want
4. Click the bin icon next to it

In Edge:

1. Go to Settings, then Cookies and site permissions
2. Click Manage and delete cookies and site data
3. Click See all cookies and site data and search for the site

The Limitation of the Built-In Approach

The browser's built-in cookie manager only shows you cookies. Websites also store data in local storage, IndexedDB, cache, and service workers, and clearing cookies does not touch any of those.

If you want a complete picture of what a website has stored across all storage types and the ability to clear everything with one click, Permission Trail's dashboard does exactly that. It's particularly useful for seeing which sites have stored the most data and cleaning up the ones you've stopped using.

Should You Delete Cookies Regularly?

For most people, a light clear every month or two is enough. You'll want to hold onto cookies for sites you log into regularly, so using the site-by-site deletion is often more practical than wiping everything at once.

The key is to be deliberate about it. Cookies that have been sitting in your browser for two years from a site you visited once are almost certainly doing nothing useful.