Want advertisers to forget what you did in the past? Want to refresh your browser? Find out here how to delete cookies on a Mac in Safari across the board or for specific sites.
First, It Is Good to Emit Odors and Flail Your Arms
It is advantageous to smell and swing your arms when mosquitoes are around, at least. If the insects are of the aedes aegypti kind, they have been found to associate danger from swung hands and arms with the swinger’s distinct odor. They then tend to avoid the dangerous suspect and fly for more harmless prey.
Want to get rid of cookies in the Safari browser, at least for the time? Flail your fingers and hands like so (and the odor shall be of secondary importance):
How to Delete Cookies in Safari on a Mac
Time needed: 3 minutes
To delete all cookies stored in Safari under macOS on a Mac:
- Select Safari | Preferences… from the menu in Safari.
macOS keyboard shortcut: Press Command , to open preferences quickly.
- Open the Privacy tab.
- Under Cookies and website data:, click Manage Website Data….
- Click Remove All to clear all cookies (and other website data such as local storage).
- Now click Remove Now to confirm.
- Click Done.
Note: this will clear cookies in Safari and certain apps using Safari to display content from the web, such as Dashboard widgets.
How to Remove Cookies for a Site in Safari
To clear the cookies set by a particular website (while keeping other cookies untouched) in Safari:
- Select Safari | Preferences… from the menu.
- Go to the Privacy tab.
- Click Manage Website Data….
- Type the domain for the website whose cookies you want to delete over Search.
Search: You do not need to start typing with the beginning of the domain name or enter complete domain names; if you type “font”, for instance, Safari will find the domains “dafont.com,” for instance, and “fonts.googleapis.com.” - Highlight all the sites whose cookies and data you want to delete in the search results.
- Click Remove.
- Now click Done.
How to Delete Cookies in Safari for iOS on iPhone and iPad
You can also clear cookies and web site data (across the board or for specific sites) in Safari for iOS, of course.
How to Delete Cookies in Safari on a Mac: FAQ
Will removing cookies for a site also delete other website date (local storage, cached pages…)?
Yes.
Safari will delete everything associated to a website—or everything stored, with Remove All.
What do the various forms of stored data mean?
Safari can store different forms of data associated with websites:
- Cookies
Cookies are small text files that can contain any data. Historically, it was possible for cookies to be shared between websites. - Cache
When you visit a page, Safari typically keeps data both in memory and on disk so returning to the page is faster than loading it the first time was. - Local Storage
Local storage via the Web Storage API works very similarly to cookies but allows for larger amounts of data—e.g., contains of emails. - Database
Websites can store data in a SQL database through Safari to quickly access bits of relational data. - HSTS Policy
HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security) has Safari ignore all non-HTTPS pages and redirects to increase security and prevent a third party from intercepting traffic. - HTTP Alternative Services
Sites can specify alternative means to access them, a new HTTP protocol or TLS (Transport Layer Security), for example using HTTP Alternative Services.
(How to delete cookies in Safari on a Mac tested with Safari 13–17; updated November 2023)