One good thing about modern web browsers such a Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge is the fact that they save some relevant data of websites that you visit in order to make future visits faster and much more efficient.
The technology behind was designed to allow browsers to save a static version of a web page in order to feed those data back to the user when you make a URL request in the near future. Near future because these data are stored for a certain amount of time.
The same goes with Cookies. They are used for storing some personal info such as login to websites as well as settings. For example, when you turn on the Night-mode on Brumpost website, your browser saves the cookie information so next time you open the website irrespective of the page you load, you’ll be presented with the dark-mode automatically.
But what if in cases whereby you are using your friend’s computer or office laptop to do something personal for example, visiting some adult website or just something you wouldn’t want anybody else to see.
That is what this short guide is all about. In this short tutorial, I’ll walk you through how to clear your Microsoft Edge cookies, cache and browser history so that you don’t have your information stored next time anybody other than you hops on the browser because think about it, how embarrassing would it be if your boss wanted to help you with something and started typing the letter “P” only for an array of “Pornhub.co” URL popping down the suggestion.
Clear Cookies and Browsing History from Edge
For this tutorial, we’ll be using the Microsoft Edge browser which comes default with Windows PCs and the first place to head in order to get started is the Settings area which can be accessed by clicking on the Three dots icon at the top right corner of your browser.
Upon clicking, there will be a drop-down or fly-out menu which when you scroll down, you should be able to locate the Settings area.
Alternatively, you can use the URL edge://settings/profiles/ to find the settings page. (The Profile preceding) is when you’re logged in. So even if you’re not, edge://settings/ should open the settings page for you.
Then from the “Settings” page click on Privacy, search, and services which is located by the left-hand panel. Just as you trailed to the Settings page via a URL, you can do the same with the Privacy page by using the URL +edge://settings/privacy.
From the page, you’ll be able to make a number of privacy-related changes to your Edge browser. To do that, head over to the data clearing section located beneath the “Tracking Prevention” and then click on “Choose what to clear” button located under the “Clear browsing data” section.
From there, there will be a small pop box which contains a number of options which you can tick. And for this short guide, we’ll be leaving only the “Cache images and files”, “Cookies and other site data” and “Browsing data” ticked while we’ll have the rest unchecked.
However, you can literally tick all the boxes just in case you want to permanently remove every data on the Microsoft Edge browser such as extreme cases like passing on your computer to another person and you definitely don’t want them to have an idea of what you’ve been up to or for whatever reason best known to you.
Also, if you have Sync turned on, it will clear the data across all devices you have synced with your Microsoft account just like how your browsing history and data is shared across your Google Account via the Chrome browser. With this, you’ll have all the data cleared on your desktop Microsoft Edge browser cleared out on the mobile version as well.
With all that clarified and out of the way, the next thing is to proceed with how far back you want to go with your data deletion.
To do that, there is a collapsible at the top of the check boxes with the label “Time range” which when clicked will open a slide-out listing time frame options you can select all ranging from the last hour, 24 hours, 7 days, 4 weeks or even all times. So depending on what you to get rid of and when, here is your chance to get it done in one click.
After you have made your selections click the Clear now button. This will clear everything on your Microsoft Browser including the data on the account linked with it.
The other thing you can do is to stick with the “Incognito Mode” which basically keep your browsing history from being saved. There also won’t be any cookie or login information saved when you use Incognito mode.
How to Clear Cookies and Other Data when you close your Edge browser
The other alternative is to make your Microsoft Edge browser auto-delete your browsing history and cookies every time you close the browser. In other to do this, you’ll have to click on the “Choose what to clear every time you close the browser” option or paste the URL “edge://settings/clearBrowsingDataOnClose“.
On the following page just toggle on the items you’d like to be cleared out each time you close out of Edge.
One cool thing about the Edge Browser is that you’re allowed to whitelist a number of sites that you don’t want cookies cleared for.
A good example is your social networking account because you definitely don’t want to be logging in anytime you want to access the site via your Edge browser.
To do this, click on the Add button and type in a site’s address and click the Add button. Do this for each site you want included on the Do not clear list. You can also add third-party cookies on that whitelisted website.
You can also edit and remove sites from the list. And that’s it. With that, you have achieved clearing data on your Microsoft Edge browser. Hopefully this helps.
