I don’t understand what is going on with Cookies and site data in Brave nowadays.
First, I can no longer find the “Clear cookies and site data when you quite Brave” setting. It used to be in Privacy and Security but now it’s nowhere to be found.
I wanted to confirm the cookies were still being cleared when I quit Brave so after a lot of searching I finally found out where I think the site data is being stored, under Privacy and Security → Site and Shields Settings → “View Permissions and Data Stored across sites”… and I do not see anything there when I close and reopen Brave. OK, cookies are still clearing… BUT…
then I go into Privacy and Security → Delete Browsing Data → On Exit → Cookies and Other Site Data (unchecked) it says “From 50 sites” … as if it has cookies and site data stored from 50 sites that it did not show me in the “View Permissions and Data stored across sites.”
So now I really have no clue what Brave is doing with the cookies, why it is storing cookies and data from 50 sites but then not showing it to me, and acting as if there is no cookies stored when I revisit websites?
And also, how to correctly set the option to “clear cookies and site data when I quit Brave” since that original setting has disappeared?
Brave Version( check About Brave):
Version 1.71.118 Chromium: 130.0.6723.70 (Official Build) (64-bit)
I still have no idea why when I go into Privacy and Security → Delete Browsing Data → On Exit → Cookies and Other Site Data (unchecked) it says “From 50 sites”… but there isn’t supposed to be any cookies saving according to settings in brave://settings/content/siteData and I can’t find those 50 cookies listed in " View permissions and data stored across sites"… so why does it say there is cookies from 50 sites? so confused and definitely don’t trust Brave with handling cookies properly at this point
@coolio it’s because your premise is wrong. I’m not sure why you think cookies are supposed to show up at brave://settings/content/siteData. This isn’t true on Chrome, Brave, or any chromium based browser.
Cookies are only visible at brave://settings/content/all.
So you trying to say you don’t see stuff listed at brave://settings/content/siteData and therefore you think nothing exists is kind of the origin of your dilemma.
Did you maybe have another profile in the past? Maybe Brave is picking up cookies from another Brave profile folder you’re not using anymore?
Also… we are just trying to help you, maybe there’s been some miscommunication… but something certainly isn’t making sense and I think we’re all going crazy trying to figure out the answer.
@coolio my mind was more focused on your complaint of cookies, when in fact your focus seems to be more on Site Data. I missed this point due to the title of your topic and some of the things shared.
Let me first emphasize that there is a difference between Cookies and Site Data. This is why the option you’re referring to that mentions 50 sites is labeled Cookies and other site data.
There was a time I knew a bit more on that but like heck am I remembering it now. But once we’re on the same page in that regard, I’m able to test and see what you’re getting at. So like in testing on Nightly:
This is where you’re saying we can clear out cookies, enable it to say not to allow websites to save data, etc but then it still shows cookies or site data as being on the device.
So the question would be What is the cookies and other site data from the 27 sites?.
And I get it, I can’t find anything specific. So we would have to tag in people like @Mattches and @steeven to see if they could help fill in that blank.
So rather than narrowing to ask about cookies, it’s just asking what this data might be that we’re seeing reported on Clear Browsing Data but can’t find in any individual list?
Also to go further, tested to see if it was just a matter of needing to clear out old data, so I tried that, but no good.
I was going to write a comment here about a similar experience but decided to create my own topic as it seemed a bit excessive by the time I was done, and though the issues are very similar, the answer might not be so similar, see: Clearing Data NOT Always Clearing Data (APPS)
Can anyone confirm for me what the exact steps being used here are? There are several ways you can clear cookies/site data/etc. from the browser — which method is being used here?
On my end, I opened a test profile, visited some sites, went to brave://settings/clearBrowserData, clicked On exit, selected the Cookies and site data option then quit the browser.
On relaunch, no data was shown anywhere, including on the On exit menu. So using this method, as far as I can tell, this is successfully clearing any/all browsing data when the browser is closed.
Hi @Mattches What you said just above was one of the couple ways that I tried doing it, my issue isn’t so much with cookies/site data though as the original poster has discussed, as it is with an APP… but I didn’t want to hijack this topic too much so I created my own if you could please check it out too: Clearing Data NOT Always Clearing Data (APPS)
Thanks
@Mattches, I made a small video to illustrate the issue, but the main point is that entries appear in Cookies and Site Data in Delete Browsing Data, even though nothing shows up in brave://settings/content/all or other menus. This raises the question: what exactly is being saved?
One way of checking this would be
Go to brave://settings/content/siteData and set option to Don’t allow sites to save data on your device (not recommended). This gives a warning and changes Shields to Block All Cookies. So at this point, cookies and site data should be blocked, right? This is because you told it not to allow sites to save data and Shields now also says it’s blocking all cookies.
Go to brave://settings/content/all which is where all cookies and permissions are supposed to be. Go ahead and delete everything there.
Go to brave://settings/clearBrowserData. You can go Advanced or On Exit. You’ll notice it will have entries fpr Cookies and other site data… Go ahead and clear this so it says 0.
Go visit a few websites. Based on our settings, there should be no cookies or on-device data being saved.
Go back to brave://settings/clearBrowserData and you’ll see there is a number for entries under Cookies and site data even though it should be blocked.
Perhaps I should have made a better video, but here’s me messing with it and kind of showing what is explained above. And just to note, I haven’t tested if it works the same way on Chrome. My assumption is whatever is happening there is inherited on chromium, but either way it is a good question being brought up on why Delete Browsing Data shows like there are entries to be deleted even though those entries aren’t being listed anywhere else.
Just to confirm, same thing does happen in Chrome.
So despite saying nothing can save site data, things show up as if there’s something there to be deleted under Cookies and site data. Though no clue what it is.
Weird how it shows no cookies or site data, but yet on the Clear Browsing Data portion there’s something from sites. And as visit more sites, it grows larger in number.
