Enable Cookies in Safari

Updated at: Feb 19, 2022

This guide will step you through the process of getting Cookies enabled in Safari on macOS.

Enable Cookies

1. Click the "Safari" menu

   Make sure you have a Safari window open and active; you will see the "Safari" menu in the top left of your screen. Click it and it will expand to show Safari specific options.

   

2. Click the "Preferences" menu item

   Now that you have expanded the Safari menu, you will see the Preferences item - click on it.

   

   The Safari Preferences screen will now appear.

3. Click the "Privacy" tab

   The Safari Preferences screen has a number of sections, indicated by the various options along the top of the screen (General/Tabs/AutoFill etc). Click the Privacy item to see privacy related options.

   

4. Choose your preferred Cookies and tracking settings

   On the Privacy Preferences tab, you will see the "Website tracking:" and "Cookies and website data:" checkboxes.

   

   Enabling Prevent cross-site tracking blocks third-party cookies from being set as well as third-party websites from storing data on your computer. Enabling this option is a good step in helping prevent companies from tracking your activity online.

   Enabling Block all cookies will prevent block First-Party cookies, as well as Third-Party cookies. Enabling this may cause websites to not work properly, and Safari will warn you about this if you choose this option.

   A good balance of settings is to enable Prevent cross-site tracking and disable Block all cookies.

   If you click the Manage Website Data button you'll see a list of website domains which have stored data on your computer. You can remove some or all of them.

5. Close the Preferences window

   Once you have configured your cookie blocking preferences, you can simply close this window and continue using Safari.

   

   Congratulations, you just configured Cookies in Safari. Click here to check if Cookies are enabled.

   You may also want to take a moment to clear your cookies and history in Safari.

Safari and Third-Party Cookies

After extensive testing and debugging, we have found that when you enable Block cross-site tracking in Safari it will still hold on to the third-party cookies and keep using them until you restart Safari.

So if you choose to enable Block cross-site tracking in Safari, make sure you restart (and preferably Reset Safari) to ensure that it doesn't keep using any third party cookies it may have cached.