What is the diffenence between these two settings?
brave://settings/cookies > Clear cookies and site data when you close all windows
and
brave://settings/clearBrowserData > cookies and other site data
The one that says On Exit will always clear cookies and site data every time you close Brave. This means you’ll always be logged out of everything and it will remember nothing about you, basically.
The other one is just a one time clearing. So it will log you out of things and clear your cookies, but only in the time you’re doing it.
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Thanks for you reply. How about whitelisted cookies? I know that the one that clears cookies every time I close the browser does, but does the other one? I don’t want to test it and lose all my whitelisted cookies.
Not quite sure. I’ve never messed around with it and honestly couldn’t even tell someone how to “whitelist cookies” right now without trying to find it in settings, because never been a thing for me. I’ll try to tag @Mattches and hope maybe he can swing by later with a more precise answer for you. I’d hate to tell you that you would lose it if you wouldn’t, and vice-versa.
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Thanks. So you know, whitelist is at
brave://settings/cookies > Sites that can always use cookies
For people who have all site data cleared when they close the browser, setting the whitelist is important.
By the way, since you don’t seem bothered about clearing cookies, is it maybe not really a problem having hundreds of random cookies stored in your browser?
Well, the cookies would just be first-party anyway. They aren’t tracking or doing anything negative. It’s just cookies to retain logins if I don’t want to be logged out and any other personal settings. No harm done by having them.
Main thing is third-party cookies and all, which is handled as long as Shields is up and running.
Ah, ok. So yeah, I knew about that but was thinking maybe was different. I’d have to get others to correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that just strictly is a setting about whether those sites can store cookies. So if you deleted, it would delete even the whitelisted, but then in the future it would allow cookies to be stored.
Basically, whitelist just overrides the “block cookies” setting you might select in Shields. That’s the only purpose it has. So deleting cookies and site settings would be separate. Don’t quote me on that though, as I might be wrong. Just is my understanding of things.
It appears that site cookies are manually whitelisted are not cleared when clearing browsing data. Testing this has also revealed an interesting bug when attempting to clear data On exit so thank you for bringing this to my attention.
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Yes, there are 2 different settings for clearing data on exit. And since the one in clear browser history had a higher number than I expected for non-whitelisted cookies, I was concerned that it might delete whitelisted cookies. The setting in the cookies menu does not delete whitelisted. I haven’t fully understood why there are 2 settings that seem to do the same thing though…
@bravoguy,
I see what you’re saying — I assume you’re referring to this option:
I believe they essentially do the same thing but now that I’m looking at it I’m not convinced. I’m going to go ahead and find out.
@bravoguy,
Silly mistake on my end.
This is a platform specific option — you’ll only see this on macOS or Linux. Unlike Windows OS, on mac and Linux you can close all browser windows but still have the app/process running — that is, the app will not be “quit” or “exited” fully.
The option in the image above basically tells the browser to clear data when all windows are closed, where as the option in History --> Clear browsing data tells the browser to clear all data when the browser process is quit/ended.
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Hmmm, that is a very subtle distinction and I wonder if that needed a whole 2 different settings for, or even if anyone cares about that distinction as background sync is disabled by default in Linux. Anyway, thanks for the update.