README.md

cookie-cleaner for Safari

Harness the benefits of "Private Browsing" without losing out on features like browsing history, an undo button, trusted log-ins and so much more!

cookie-cleaner erases any non-whitelisted cookies and local storage.

Usage

Clone this repository and

make all

To run, ensure Safari isn't running and then execute .build/release/cookie-cleaner WHITELIST where WHITELIST is a the path to a text file. Cookies and local data whose identifiers match the regular expression on any line of this file will be ignored, while all others will be deleted.

As an example, to keep log-in data for github.com, simply add the line

github

to your whitelist file. Note that the application you are launching cookie-cleaner from needs to have Full Disk Access enabled in the system Security & Privacy settings. Read below for an explanation why.

Creating an alias

To use cookie-cleaner more comfortably, you can, for example, create an alias to run it with your whitelist-file in your shell. For zsh, you could add the following to your ~/.zshrc

alias cookie-cleaner="<repository path>/.build/release/cookie-cleaner <whitelist file path>"

and then run it simply with cookie-cleaner.

Running cookie-cleaner automatically

You can have run cookie-cleaner automatically when you close Safari or when your Mac goes to sleep with trigger-based automation tools such as Hammerspoon or BetterTouchTool. For this to work, the automation tool needs to have Full Disk Access enabled.

Note on Full Disk Access

macOS sandboxes files downloaded from the internet for security reasons and does the same to the main cookie file that this tool modifies (by deleting non-whitelisted cookies). Files sandboxed in this way can only be accessed and modified through a program that is granted Full Disk Access.