How to Clear Browser Cache

As the internet evolved, new functions including cookies and cache have made browsing the web or working from home faster and easier. However, these functions do come with drawbacks. Find out how to manage your cookies and clear your browser cache for an elevated online experience.

Table of Contents:

What are cookies?

Cookies are small files created by the websites you visit to hold information about your online activity. These files often improve your user experience by saving your passwords, remembering your preferences, and providing content relevant to your location. When you load a website, your browser sends this cookie back to the server to give the site this information. This exchange can add time to your browsing experience.

Although you may have some privacy concerns about websites having access to your personal information, cookies only store your information for a short amount of time. The security of cookies is less of a concern, as long as you avoid suspicious websites and keep your device updated with antivirus software.

The main reason to clear your cookies is to improve overall internet speed. You may end up spending time trying to remember your passwords, but you’ll be able to browse new web pages faster.

What is a cache?

Your web cache shares similarities with cookies, but functions differently. Cookies save your user preferences and behaviours, and cache saves information about the web pages themselves. Both cache and cookies store data on your device, but while cookies expire eventually, you must manually clear your cache.

A cache stores copies of all data that passes through it, like HTML pages and images, and helps display a web page. When you first visit a website, it might take time to load all the online content, like images or videos. However, once it’s saved to the cache, your subsequent visits will load faster.

Similar to clearing your cookies, deleting your browser cache improves your speed and performance. While the purpose of a cache is to make loading pages faster, over time it usually saves pages that you never even visit. Take the time to occasionally clear your cache for faster internet access and to free up storage space on your device.

What’s the difference between cache and browser history?

Browser history lists all the specific web pages you’ve visited using a specific browser. Unlike your cache, you can access this list to find a website you’ve previously visited. Your browser history functions to help you remember previous web pages, while a cache helps jog your device’s memory.

How to clear browser cache and cookies — Chrome

  1. Click the Tools menu (i.e., three dotted lines in the upper-right corner).
  2. Select History.
  3. Select Clear Browsing Data from the left-hand side. Set the Time Range set to All Time. Check-mark Cookies and other site data and Cached images and files and select  Clear Data.
  4. If you are on a Windows computer, close and reopen Chrome to save your changes. If you are on an Apple computer, go to the Chrome menu on the top menu bar and select Quit for the changes to take effect.

How to clear history on Google Chrome for iOS:

  1. Open Google Chrome on your iOS device.
  2. Click on the menu toolbar in the bottom-right corner
  3. Select Settings.
  4. Select Privacy.
  5. Select Cookies, Site Data, and Cached Images and Files. At the top, set the Time Range set to All Time.
  6. Click Clear Browsing Data at the bottom of the screen.

Confirm by clicking Clear Browsing Data again.

How to clear browser cache and cookies — Microsoft Edge

Managing and clearing your cache and cookies depends on the device and browser you use. To clear your browser cache and cookies in Microsoft Edge, go to Settings > Privacy > Clear browsing data and select Ctrl+Shift+Del. You can also type "edge://settings/clearbrowserdata" in your address bar to access this function.

Clear your browsing history, cookies, and cached images and files in minutes. You’ll be able to select the dates you want to clear, so you can keep some of your browsing history intact if you’d like.

Remember that clearing data in Microsoft Edge deletes it on any of your synced devices. If you would like to avoid this, sign out of your account before clearing your cache and cookies.

How to delete history on Firefox:

  1. Click on the Tools bar.
  2. Click on Options (On Mac, it is labelled Preferences).
  3. On the menu to the left, select Privacy & Security.
  4. Under the Cookies and Site Data option, click the Clear Data button.
  5. Select only the two options and hit clear now.

If you are on a Windows computer, close and reopen Firefox to save your changes. If you are on an Apple computer, go to the Firefox menu on the top menu bar and select Quit for the changes to take effect.

How to clear history on Safari for macOS:

  1. Click on Safari on the top menu bar.
  2. Click Preferences.
  3. Click the Privacy tab.
  4. Click Manage Website Data.
  5. Click Remove All.
  6. Click Remove Now.
  7. Go to the Safari menu on the top menu bar.

Select Quit to close Safari and save your changes.

How to delete history on Safari for iOS – how to delete cookies on iPhone:

  1. Go to the Settings app on your device.
  2. Scroll down to the Safari menu.
  3. Scroll down and select Clear History and Website Data.
  4. You will see a pop-up asking if you want to clear the History and Data. Select Clear History and Data.

The button to Clear History and Website Data will turn grey when the cache and cookies have been successfully cleared.

How To clear the cache in the Opera browser: 

  1. Open Opera
  2. Select Settings
  3. Click Advanced
  4. Click Privacy and security
  5. Click Clear browsing data
  6. Select Cached images and files
  7. Choose a time range or select All time
  • Click Clear data
You can also set Opera to automatically clear cookies and site data when you close the browser. To do this:
  1. Go to Opera Settings
  2. Click Privacy and Security
  3. Click Cookies and site data
  4. Scroll down and turn on the toggle next to Clear cookies and site data when you quit Opera
 
 
 
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