How to Enable Cookies on iPhone’s Safari and Other Browsers
A lot of smartphone users turn off cookies on their phones’ browsers, and, frankly speaking, they’re probably right for doing so. Privacy and security are not something you trivialize where the internet space is concerned. Through cookies, ad companies can mine information about you and your activities and harness the data to recommend products and services to you.
But is that all cookies are there for? Not quite. Cookies are, in fact, essential for optimizing your internet experience as they’re what websites use to store your input preferences, passwords, usernames, etc. Given this, it still makes sense to have them enabled on your browser, but you can now have more control over them by disabling third-party ones.
The guide here will help you with all that; read on below to find out!
How to Enable Cookies on Safari
The default browser on iOS, Safari, allows you to enable and disable cookies at will. However, these are mostly first-party cookies that the browser uses to save relevant information and optimize your internet experience. They pose no threat whatsoever to your privacy and security if that’s ever a concern.
Follow the steps below to enable cookies for Safari:
- Launch the Settings app on your iPhone
- Scroll down the menu till you find Safari, and then tap it
- On the Safari app information page, go to the Privacy & Security section and check if Block All Cookies is toggled on (a green slider). If it’s on, toggle it back off (a grey slider) to enable cookies on your Safari.
That’s it! You’ve successfully enabled cookies on Safari. However, if you’d fare better with third-party cookies disabled, go back to the Safari app information page. Then, scroll down to the Privacy & Security page and ensure Prevent Cross-Site Tracking is toggled on.
This option, when toggled on, prevents websites from tracking your activities and then using it to advertise their products or services to you.
Meanwhile, if you use another browser on your iPhone, the following method will help you enable cookies on it.
How to Enable Cookies on Other Browsers (Chrome, Firefox…)
Third-party browsers such as Google Chrome and Firefox always access your cookies by default, and neither browser recommends that you turn them off because doing so could prove detrimental to their functionality. However, they do allow you to disable cookies for third-party websites.
To do this on Chrome, for example,
- Launch the Google Chrome app
- Tap the horizontal three-dots (…) and select Settings from the options
- On the Settings page, scroll to and select Privacy
- Next, select Clear Browsing Data
- Untick Cookies, Site Data
By doing so, third-party cookies will stop working on your browser. The same method can be applied to Firefox and other Chromium browsers.
Final Notes
While enabling cookies doesn’t ruin your browsing experience in any way depending on how you set them, there’s still no better feeling than browsing the internet with your privacy and security at their optimal best.
If that’s something you’d cherish occasionally, you can use the incognito mode on your browser to temporarily disable cookies while browsing.
