You’re browsing along, maybe looking for a new set of noise-canceling headphones or checking your local weather, and suddenly everything feels heavy. Safari on your iPad starts lagging. That one website you visit every morning keeps showing you an outdated version of the homepage. Or worse, you’re seeing targeted ads for that specific pair of shoes you looked at once three weeks ago.
It's annoying.
The culprit is usually a buildup of digital debris. When people search for how to clear cookies on iPad Safari, they usually aren't just looking to tidy up their settings for the sake of it. They want their privacy back. They want their tablet to stop acting like it’s ten years old. Cookies are basically tiny files that websites drop into your browser to remember who you are. While they make logging in easier, they also track your movements across the web.
Cleaning them out is a necessity.
The Difference Between Cookies and Your Entire History
Let’s get one thing straight before you start tapping away at your screen: there is a massive difference between clearing your "history" and clearing your "cookies."
Most people just hit the big red button that says "Clear History and Website Data." That's the nuclear option. It wipes out the list of every site you've visited, your search history, and all those cookies. It's clean, sure, but it's also a bit of a pain because you'll have to log back into every single website you use.
If you just want to get rid of the trackers but keep your history intact, there's a more surgical way to handle it. You can actually dive into the advanced settings to remove data for specific sites. This is great if one specific webpage is acting buggy but you don't want to lose your saved login for your banking app or your favorite forum. Apple has actually made this process remarkably granular over the last few iOS updates, especially with the 2024 and 2025 refinements to iPadOS that focused heavily on user privacy.
The Standard Way to Wipe the Slate Clean
For those who just want the clutter gone right now, here is the straightforward path. Open your Settings app. It’s the one with the grey gears. Scroll down the left-hand sidebar until you find Safari. It’s usually buried under the first few blocks of apps like Mail, Contacts, and Notes.
Once you tap Safari, look for the blue text that reads Clear History and Website Data.
When you tap that, a pop-up appears. This is where Apple gives you a little bit of control. You can choose to clear the last hour, today, today and yesterday, or all history. If you're trying to fix a performance issue, go for "All History."
One interesting thing to note: if you have "Close All Tabs" toggled on, Safari will also kill every open tab you have. If you’re the kind of person with 47 open tabs that you "plan to read later," make sure that toggle is off before you confirm. Otherwise, they’re gone forever.
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How to Clear Cookies on iPad Safari Without Losing Your History
Maybe you don't want to lose your browsing history. Honestly, I get it. Having those URL suggestions pop up when you start typing is a huge time-saver.
To delete cookies while keeping your history:
- Go to Settings > Safari.
- Scroll all the way to the bottom and tap Advanced.
- Tap Website Data.
- Wait a few seconds for the list to load. It might take a minute if you haven't done this in a year.
- Tap Remove All Website Data at the bottom, or swipe left on individual sites to delete them one by one.
This "Advanced" menu is where the real power is. You’ll see exactly how much space each site is hogging. Some news sites or social media platforms can easily rack up 50MB to 100MB of storage just in cached images and tracking scripts. If you see a site you haven't visited in months taking up space, swipe it away.
Why Does This Actually Matter?
Privacy is the big one.
Advertisers use "third-party cookies" to follow you. If you look at an espresso machine on one site, and then see an ad for that same machine on a news blog five minutes later, that’s a cookie at work. Apple has been fighting this with a feature called Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP). ITP uses on-device machine learning to identify and block trackers.
However, even with ITP, "first-party cookies" (the ones from the site you are actually visiting) still accumulate.
According to privacy experts at organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), regularly clearing this data is one of the simplest ways to reduce your digital footprint. It’s not a silver bullet—your IP address and browser fingerprinting can still identify you—but it breaks the easy links that advertisers rely on.
The Performance Factor
It isn't just about shadowy advertisers. It's about RAM and storage.
Every time Safari loads a page, it checks its cache to see if it already has the images or scripts stored locally. This is supposed to make things faster. But when that cache gets corrupted or grows too large, the "checking" process actually takes longer than just downloading the data fresh.
If Safari feels "janky" or if your iPad is heating up while you’re just reading an article, your cache is likely the culprit. Clearing it forces the browser to start with a clean slate, which usually results in a noticeable snappiness.
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What About Private Browsing?
If you find yourself clearing cookies every few days, you should probably just use Private Browsing Mode.
When you open a Private tab in Safari, the browser doesn't remember the pages you visit, your search history, or your AutoFill information. More importantly, it throws away cookies the second you close the tab.
To turn this on, tap the Tabs icon (the two overlapping squares) in the top right of Safari, then tap the button in the middle of the bottom bar that shows your number of tabs or "Tab Groups." Select Private.
The search bar will turn dark grey or black, signaling that you're in the "ghost" zone. It's a great habit for one-off searches or when you're using a device that isn't yours.
Common Myths About Clearing iPad Data
A lot of people think that clearing Safari cookies will log them out of apps like Facebook, Instagram, or Gmail.
It won't.
Apps and browsers are separate containers. Your Facebook app uses its own internal token to keep you logged in. Clearing your Safari cookies only affects your experience inside the Safari app.
Another misconception is that this will free up gigabytes of space. Usually, it won't. Cookies and website data are tiny. Unless you have a very small 64GB iPad that is almost full, clearing cookies is about speed and privacy, not about making room for new photos.
A Note on Parental Controls
If you are trying to clear the history on an iPad that has Screen Time restrictions enabled, you might find the "Clear History and Website Data" button is greyed out.
This isn't a bug.
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It’s a security feature. If "Limit Adult Websites" is turned on under the Content & Privacy Restrictions in Settings, Apple prevents the user from deleting their tracks. To fix this, you have to go to Settings > Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions > Content Restrictions > Web Content and set it to "Unrestricted." Only then will the clearing options become available again.
Keeping Your iPad Clean Moving Forward
Instead of waiting for the browser to slow down, you can be proactive.
In the Safari settings, there is a toggle for Block All Cookies. I wouldn't recommend turning this on. It sounds like a great privacy move, but it actually breaks most of the internet. You won't be able to log into most sites, and shopping carts will stop working entirely.
A better move? Toggle on Prevent Cross-Site Tracking. This is usually on by default, but it’s worth double-checking.
Also, consider using a Content Blocker. These are third-party apps from the App Store (like 1Blocker or AdGuard) that integrate directly with Safari. They stop the cookies and trackers from even loading in the first place, which means your "Website Data" folder stays much cleaner over time.
Next Steps for a Faster iPad:
Now that you've cleared out the junk, take a moment to look at your open tabs. If you have hundreds of them, tap and hold the Tabs icon and select Close All [X] Tabs.
Then, perform a Force Restart on your iPad. For iPads without a Home button, quickly press and release Volume Up, then Volume Down, then hold the Power button until the Apple logo appears. This clears out the system RAM and, combined with your fresh Safari cache, will make your iPad feel like it just came out of the box.
Check your Settings > Safari > Extensions as well. If you have old extensions you don't use, delete them. They can sometimes run processes in the background that slow down your page loads more than a cookie ever would.
Finally, if you’re really worried about privacy, consider switching your default search engine to DuckDuckGo or Ecosia within the Safari settings. They don't track your searches the way others do, which means fewer cookies being generated in the first place.