How to Clear Safari Cache, History and Cookies on Mac
You may want to clear Safari history, cache, and website data on Mac to prevent others from seeing what you were browsing. Removing these helps make the browser responsive. It also comes handy when Safari lags or takes ages to load webpages. The steps to delete website data of Safari in macOS is easy. Let us see how.
- Consequences of Clearing Safari History and Website Data
- How to Clear Safari History on Mac
- How to Delete Specific Webpage from Safari History on Mac
- How to Clear Safari Cache on Mac
- How to Clear Safari Cookies on Mac
Consequences of Clearing Safari History and Website Data
- Records of visited webpages are deleted.
- A list of the frequently visited sites is also cleared.
- It may reduce tracking by websites. (a good thing)
- You may be logged out of websites.
- Records of blocked or allowed location access, notification, etc. are also reset. So, if you visit a website, it will again ask your permission for these.
- The download list is deleted. (Actual downloaded files are not.)
- If you have several Apple devices that sync via iCloud, the changes will reflect on all.
How Clear Safari History on Mac
You can choose to clear all history in few clicks. Or choose to delete them date-wise or by specific pages. Let me show you how.
- Open Safari.
- Click on History from the top menu bar.
- Click on Clear History.
- Dropdown menu will show all history. Click on it if you want to select another option, like the last hour, today, today, and yesterday.
- Finally, click on Clear History.
How to Delete Specific Webpage from Safari History on Mac
- Open Safari.
- From the top menu bar, click on History.
- Click on Show All History.
- You will see Last Visited Today and other dates. Right-click on one and then choose Delete.
- Or, click on the tiny triangle arrow ▶ to expand.
Next, right-click on an individual page and choose Delete.
How to Clear Safari Cache on Mac
Cache is like a snapshot of the webpage. When you revisit the same page, your browser loads this stored snapshot (or parts of it) first, instead of fetching it again from the internet. It ensures you have a fast experience.
However, too many cache files may make your overall browser slow. Sometimes, it may serve you an un-updated version of a webpage. To fix such problems, you may need to clear the cache at regular intervals. Here is how to do that for Safari in macOS.
- Open Safari.
- Click on Safari next to the Apple logo.
- Click on Preferences.
- Click on Advanced.
- Check the box for Show Develop menu in menu bar.
- Now click on Develop from the top.
- Finally, click on Empty Caches.
Though you won’t see any confirmation or pop-up, the cache clearing process was successfully initiated and completed in the background.
How to Clear Safari Cookies on Mac
Cookies are tiny data packets that a website saves on your device. It helps the site know that you are revisiting it. (If this is your first visit to iGeeksBlog, you might have seen a black banner at the bottom asking for your cookie consent.)
When you clear history and website data, cookies are also deleted. However, here is how to remove cookies (cache, etc. too) individually. And even block them.
- Open Safari.
- Click on Safari from the top menu bar.
- Click on Preferences.
- Click on Privacy.
- Check the box for Block all cookies. Next, click on Block All. This will disable them for all future websites. Existing cookies and website data will be removed, as well. However, blocking cookies may give a bad browsing experience, and some sites might not load or function properly.
- To delete individual cookies, click on Manage Website Data.
- Next, click on a website and then click on Remove.
- At last, click on Done.
Signing off…
This is how you can clear up Safari on Mac. After this, when you use this browser again, it will recreate all these files for the websites you visit.
Next, you may learn how to clear cache, history, website data on iPhone or iPad.