We’ve all been there: You’re chatting with someone on Facebook about something random — say, going to Portugal or making brisket — and then suddenly you start seeing online information and ads about Portugal or brisket everywhere. What gives? Is your phone spying on you? Well, sort of — it all boils down to your device’s cookies, which could also be responsible for a sudden downturn in your phone’s performance. That’s exactly why you need to learn how to clear cookies on your iPhone or Android device. Cookies are little bits of data that help websites remember who you are, and that can be good or bad. Cookies help you stay logged into a website so you don’t have to log in over and over, but they can also track you from site to site. Believe it or not, you will never be prompted to clear the cookies on your device, so if you’re feeling a little lost, it’s not you. The reason you need to clear the cookies is to protect your privacy or to fix any potential bugs in your system. Here’s how to do the job.
iPhone
All iPhones use Apple’s Safari as the default browser.
- 1. Go to Settings > Safari > Clear History and Website Data.
- 2. When “Clear History and Data” pops up, tap it to confirm.
Android
Most Androids use Google’s Chrome as the default browser.
- 1. Open the Google Chrome browser.
- 2. Tap the three vertical dots on the top right of the screen.
- 3. Select History > Clear Browsing Data.
- 4. Now check the box next to the items you wish to delete: Browsing History, Cookies and Site Data, and/or Cached Images and Files.
- 5. Tap the upside-down triangle next to “Time Range” to set the time frame you wish to delete; your choices range from the last hour to “All Time.”
- 6. Finally, tap the “Clear Data” button at the bottom of the screen to complete the process.
If you don’t want to be bothered doing this in the future, use DuckDuckGo as your browser. It doesn’t store your search history or keep a cache of your searches, so it’s not necessary to clear cookies.
