Is it safe to clear my cookies? (2024)

Updated at: Feb 13, 2022

Generally speaking, yes it is safe to clear your browser cache...

When you clear your browser cache, you are simply telling your web browser to delete the temporary files that it has automatically downloaded in order to show you a website. Your web browser will naturally delete these files anyway after a certain amount of time (usually a few weeks), but by manually clearing the cache you are simply causing this to happen sooner than normal.

But make sure you select the correct options

So while it is generally safe to delete your browser cache, be warned that most web browsers group the controls for deleting your Cache, Cookies, and Browser History all together, so while you might intend to only clear some browser data but end up clearing all of it by mistake. It's important to read the computer settings closely and choose the right options.

For example, Chrome gives you lots of control over what gets selected when you choose to Delete browser data, whereas Safari doesn't give you much control and it's a bit more "all or nothing".

But even if you deleted more Browsing data than you intended to, the worst that would happen is you would be logged out of some websites, you would lose your browsing history, and websites might take a fraction longer to download than normal the first time you load them. It's pretty low-stakes to be honest, but still it's a good idea to closely check what you're doing first!

What won't be deleted when you clear your cache, cookies, or history

Clearing your cache won't delete files you have saved

A common concern is that clearing your cache might delete the images, songs, documents, and other files you have downloaded from website you have visited, but those files are different to your web browser cache.

So rest assured that simply clearing your cache won't affect the precious files you have saved.

Clearing your cache won't delete your bookmarks

Your Browser History and your Browser Bookmarks are two different things - the history is just a list of websites you've visited recently (unless you were in Private/Incognito mode), and your bookmarks are a collection of addresses for web pages that you have specifically stored in your browser.

The two are different from each other, and deleting your History, Cache, or Cookies won't delete your Bookmarks.

Clearing your cache won't delete emails, posts, or text messages

Emails, social media posts, text messages, are not primarily stored in your cache, cookies, or history, so clearing your browser data should have no effect on them. (Depending on your browser and how you use it, there may technically be copies of those sorts of things in your cache, but they are not the primary copies, and so clearing your browsing data won't effect the "real" versions.)

Do you have any other questions about clearing your cache?

We're really happy to answer any questions you have about clearing your cache, cookies, and history - just send us a message with your question and we'll help however we can, including posting the answer here to help others too!