What are cache and cookies for?
Cache and cookies can offer convenience and improved browsing experience because they hold onto information about the websites you visit, as well as track your activity online. This creates a smoother, potentially faster and more customised Internet experience when you browse the same websites again.
Why should we delete them?
It is good practice to clear your cache and cookies once in a while, especially when you encounter problems such as crashing browsers, slowness loading websites or features, incorrect information or formatting issues on webpages. Clearing your cache and cookies can free up some storage space and help you retrieve a fresh version of the website. In some cases, even if bugs have been fixed by developers, you won't see this until you retrieve that latest copy, because your browser is otherwise still loading the old version that was previously stored for you and there may be some conflicts there.
Steps to clear your cache and cookies
This article uses a Chrome browser as an example, but similar steps apply for other browsers.
- Open a browser window or tab.
- Click the kebab (three dots) menu on the top right corner
.
- Navigate to More Tools
Clear browsing data.
- In the pop-up window, choose your desired time range. To delete everything, select All time.
- Ensure the boxes for Cookies and other site data and Cached images and files are checked.
- Click Clear data.
Note: Clearing this data may slow things down marginally when you load pages again for the first time after, since instead of relying on information temporarily stored in your cache, your device needs to re-download them from the website. You may need to re-authenticate to websites again, lose certain preferences or settings, and see less personalised content recommendations (where applicable) until the cookies get re-created again.