If you’re trying to troubleshoot loading or formatting issues to improve your browsing experience in Mozilla Firefox, clearing your cache and cookies is a great place to start. Here’s how and what happens when you delete them.
What happens when the cache and cookies are deleted?
When you visit a website, it sometimes records (or remembers) certain information. The cookies record a user’s browsing data (with their consent) and the cache helps web pages load faster by remembering images, videos and other parts of the web page from the last visit to the web. instead of having to send everything back on each visit.
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When you clear your cache and cookies, all of this information is deleted. This means that all the passwords you entered on a website will have to be re-entered and the loading time of previously visited sites will increase as it has to re-download each data packet from the webpage.
Even still, sometimes a fresh start is needed, especially when troubleshooting browser issues.
How to clear Firefox cache and cookies on the desktop
To clear the cache and cookies in Firefox on Windows 10, Mac, and Linux, select the hamburger icon in the upper right corner of the browser to open the menu.
Select “Options” from the menu.
Firefox preference settings will appear in a new tab. Here, select “Privacy and Security” from the left pane.
Otherwise, to go directly to the Privacy & Security tab of Firefox preferences without going through the previous steps, enter about: preferences # privacy in the Firefox address bar.
Scroll down to the “Cookies and Site Data” section. Here, select “Clear data”. If you want to clear cookies and site data when you close Firefox, check the box next to this option.
The “Clear Data” window will appear. Check the boxes next to “Cookies and Site Data” and “Cached Web Content”, then select “Clear”.
A warning message will appear, informing you that if you select “Erase Now”, you may be logged out of websites and offline web content may be deleted. If you are sure, select “Erase Now”.
After a few moments, your cache and cookies will be deleted.
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How to clear Firefox cache and cookies on mobile
To clear the cache and cookies in Firefox on Android, iPhone, and iPad, open the mobile browser, and then tap the hamburger icon in the lower right corner to open the menu.
In the menu that appears, tap “Settings”.
You will now be in the “Settings” menu. Scroll down to the “Privacy” section and press “Data Management”.
In the “Clear Private Data” section of the next screen, you will see several options to choose from. For options whose data you want to clear, move the slider to the right. Otherwise, make sure they are flipped to the left so that no data is erased.
In this case, make sure that the “Cache” and “Cookies” sliders are enabled. When you’re ready, tap “Clear Private Data”.
When you see the warning message informing you that the action will erase your data, press the “OK” button. After a few moments, your cookies and your cache will be erased.
