How to Manage Cookies on Your Phone

To manage cookies on your phone, you'll need to open your preferred browser settings and find the third-party cookies options. We provide step-by-step instructions on how to manage cookies from mobile browser apps, including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Safari on iOS and Android.

We'll also recommend the best ad blockers to help you fully block cookies.

How to manage cookies on Google Chrome (Android or iOS)

Here's how to manage cookies from the Chrome app on Android.

1. Open the Google Chrome app.
2. From the top-right menu, tap Settings. 
3. Choose Site settings > Third-party cookies. 

From there, you can select one of the following options:

• Allow third-party cookies
• Block third-party cookies in Incognito
• Block third-party cookies

Here's how to modify your cookie settings on Google Chrome app for iOS.

1. Open the Google Chrome app on your iPhone or iPad.
2. Tap More and then tap Settings.
3. Tap Privacy and Security and then tap Delete Browsing Data.
4. Select Cookies, Site Data, and check any other data you'd like to clear.
5. Tap Delete Browsing Data and then tap Delete Browsing Data.
6. Tap Done.

How to manage cookies on Mozilla Firefox (Android or iOS)

Here's how to manage cookies from the Firefox app on Android or iOS.

1. Open the Mozilla Firefox app.
2. Open the three-dot menu on the top-right and tap Settings.
3. From the left-hand settings menu, select Privacy.
4. Tap Cookies.

From the pop-up screen, choose one of the following options:

• Enabled
• Enabled, excluding tracking cookies
• Enabled, excluding 3rd party
• Disabled

How to manage cookies on Safari (iOS)

Here's how to manage cookies from Safari on iOS.

1. Open the Settings app. 
2. Find and select Safari. 
3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and tap Advanced.
4. Toggle on Block All Cookies.

How to block cookies

Although we've created a guide on how to manage cookies, you can also use an ad blocker to automatically block cookies, trackers, and unwanted pop-up ads. Total Adblock and Surfshark CleanWeb are two of the best to block cookies on mobile.

What are cookies used for?

In the context of the internet, cookies are small, sometimes encrypted text files placed by websites in your browser’s directory and retrieved the next time you visit the site or load another page on the site. These cookies can be from the site or from third parties, such as ad networks.

Many websites use necessary cookies for their core processes, so rejecting those blocks much or all site functionality. First-party cookies enable smoother, more efficient site use by visitors by storing your site-specific information and preferences such as theme, language setting, privacy preferences, and even user ID and password so you don’t need to reenter those each time you visit a new page or leave and return to the site.

For example, cookies can personalize content on ecommerce sites by storing your shopping cart contents and offering quick checkout options. 

Third-party cookies

But similar to TV commercials paying for most broadcast content, ads pay for the majority of the online content we freely access. 

Cookies help advertisers to:

• Format ads on your computer
• Improve ad cost efficiency
• Attribute user engagement
• Customize offers based on your browsing and search history

Given that ads are an established fact of online life, if you’ve just searched for lawn mower reviews, wouldn’t you rather see potentially useful ads for lawnmowers or fertilizer rather than ads for, say, female hygiene products?

On the other hand, many find the use of third-party cookies objectionable, intrusive, or even verging on cyber-stalking. Some questionable tracking cookie uses include:

• Building and selling users’ online profiles
• Identifying targets for e.g. credit repair offers based on online behavior that implies financial struggles
• Adjusting prices down or up based on the user’s perceived affluence
• Not offering or even denying services based on medical and/or other information

Challenges mobile cookies face

On mobile, cookies try to do the same things they do on your desktop or laptop computer. Computer cookies inhabit your browser(s), but on mobile, they also need to operate in your various native applications (more commonly known as apps).

This sets up a distinct challenge for cookies.

On your computer, whether your operating system is Windows, macOS, or Linux, and whether you use Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, or any other browser, your cookies can count on your browser using hypertext markup language or HTTP. This provides a uniform environment. Since most users use the same browser on the same computer most of the time, a cookie can see nearly all your online activities.

In mobile, not only are there different types of devices running different operating systems with different mobile web browsers that all have their own rules, but those browsers play in different “sandboxes” from the native apps on the same device. Further, each of those apps plays in a different sandbox from each other. Finally, while you probably only use one computer, you may have a work cell phone, a personal cell phone, a tablet, one or more gaming consoles, and possibly a car-based internet-connected device.

While reports of the demise of cookies on mobile are likely a bit premature, tracking your online behavior across all those mobile devices, networks, and apps does pose a mostly insuperable challenge for the humble cookie. As a result, advertising vendors face increasingly tough questions from their clients about targeting prospective customers and accurately calculating conversion rates on mobile devices.

Another result is that users’ privacy preferences, such as tracking opt-out, entered on one app are unlikely to be respected on other apps or on the mobile web browser, or vice versa, simply because the ad networks don’t recognize the different instances of visitor interactions as belonging to the same person.