How to Clear Browsing Data in Chrome for iPhone or iPod Touch

Free up space and recover your privacy by deleting website data

Cropped image of teenage girl using mobile phone
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by Scott Orgera
Scott Orgera has been a tech journalist since 2007. He has 25+ years' experience as a programmer and QA leader and several Microsoft certifications.
Updated May 08, 2019

The Google Chrome app for the iPhone and iPod touch stores data on your device as you surf the web including your browsing history, cookies, cached images and files, saved passwords, and autofill data. While such information can prove useful for future browsing sessions, it can also present privacy and security risks as well as a shortage of storage space. Because of these inherent risks, you should know how to delete Chrome data from the cloud on your iPhone and iPhone touch.

This article applies only to the latest version of the Chrome app for iPhone and iPod touch devices running iOS 10 or later. Deleting Chrome data in Windows is a different process.

How to Delete Chrome Browsing Data on the iPhone/iPod touch

To manage your browsing history and other cached data:

  1. Open the Chrome app.

  2. Tap the ellipses (...) in the top right corner and select Settings from the menu.

  3. Tap Privacy.

  4. At the bottom, tap Clear Browsing Data.

  5. Select the items you wish to delete from Chrome by tapping them individually.

    Clearing Chrome's browsing data does not delete bookmarks, erase the app from your device, or sign you out of your Google account.

  6. Tap Clear Browsing Data twice to remove the data from your device and the cloud.

  7. Tap DONE when that last pop-up goes away to return to Chrome.

Understanding Chrome's Browsing Data Options

The types of data that Chrome automatically saves include:

  • Browsing History: Chrome maintains a record of every website you've visited since the last time you cleared the history. Access these previously viewed sites via Chrome's History screen in the main menu.
  • Cookies: Cookies are files placed on your iPhone or iPod touch when you visit certain sites. Each cookie is used to tell a web server when you return to its page. Cookies can be helpful for remembering certain website settings as well as sensitive information such as login credentials.
  • Cached Images and Files: Chrome for iPhone and iPod touch uses its cache to store images, content, and URLs of recently visited web pages. By using the cache, the browser can render these pages much faster on subsequent visits by loading the assets locally from your device's cache rather than from the web server itself.
  • Saved Passwords: When you enter a password on a website for something like your email or bank, Chrome will usually ask if you want it to remember the password. If you choose yes, it will be stored on your device or in the cloud similar to a password manager.
  • Autofill Data: In addition to passwords, Chrome also stores other information that you enter into web forms like your name, address, and payment information. This data is then used by the browser's Autofill feature to populate similar fields during subsequent sessions.