How to Clear Your Browser Cookies and Cache
When you encounter problems with a website, often the first step to resolving these issues is to clear your cookies and cache.You can navigate in your browser menu to history > clear history, but an easier way to clear your cookies, cache, and history is with the following keyboard shortcut.
On a PC: While in your browser, press CTRL + SHIFT + DELETE, and follow the on-screen steps.
On a Mac: While in the Chrome or Firefox browser, press COMMAND + SHIFT + DELETE, and follow the on-screen steps. For Safari, click Menu > Preferences > Privacy > Manage Website Data
Once you navigate to the menu there are different boxes that you can uncheck if you only want to clear cookies and cache, but not your passwords or auto-fill form information.
What are cookies, and what is a cache?
Cookies and your cache are little bits of data that accumulate on your computer. They are called up when you visit web pages to make them load faster and remember specific details about you.The cache could be the logo or architecture of web pages you visit often.Cookies are stored information that helps the browser remember details about you as you navigate from one page to the next.Cookies are how advertisers are able to re-market to you. For instance, you visit a website for shoes, and a week later while reading a news article you see an ad for those same shoes. The shoe website left a cookie on your computer that the ad block on the news article pulled from your computer to know which ad to serve you.
Why do clearing cookies and the cache fix your browsing issues?
Web pages are routinely updated and the little bits of information stored on your computer become outdated. This can cause errors with the browser if it’s getting conflicting, missing, or old information. The only way to correct the issues is to throw away all the old information and start fresh. In most cases, this means that you need to log in to your sites again, re-input information into forms, or find and add products back into a shopping cart. This can be inconvenient but it's a necessary step.