Cookies, however, aren’t always nefarious. While many aim to gather personal information and track you across the internet, others are crucial to helping websites work as intended.
If you’ve blocked all third-party cookies, you’ll soon notice that some pages are not functioning as expected. Fortunately, changing a few simple settings can fix the issue. Let’s discuss how to enable third-party cookies in common macOS browsers.
Whether you use Safari, Chrome, Firefox, or another app, the settings are simple to alter once you know how.
Allow Third-Party Cookies in Apple’s Safari
While Safari’s tracker prevention tool is often best left on, not allowing any third-party cookies can be problematic. A lot of websites rely on cookies to store important information relating to preferences and account details, and blocking them can create a negative user experience and make some pages nonfunctional.
You can enable third-party cookies in Safari using these steps:
Launch Safari. Navigate to Safari > Preferences > Privacy. Untick Block all cookies in the Cookies and website data section.
You can also use the Manage Website Data button to either remove individual cookies you don’t want stored on your Mac or clear out your entire cookie collection. The tool has a search function, so you can easily locate files related to a particular website and delete them if necessary.
Allow Third-Party Cookies in Google Chrome
To enable third-party cookies in Chrome, follow these steps:
Launch Chrome. Navigate to Chrome > Preferences. Click Privacy and security in the side menu. Click Cookies and other site data. Select either Allow all cookies or Block third-party cookies in Incognito.
If you’d prefer to take a more targeted approach to collecting cookies, you can set rules for specific sites within the Customized behaviors settings. From here, you can add entries to the Sites that can always use cookies and Sites that can never use cookies sections for greater control. Before you alter any settings, you may want to research Chrome’s cookies policy.
Allow Third-Party Cookies in Mozilla Firefox
If you’re using Firefox, you can enable third-party cookies with these simple steps:
Launch Firefox. Navigate to Firefox > Preferences. Click Privacy & Security in the side menu. Switch to Standard protection or create a Custom configuration.
Firefox also has a tool for blocking or allowing cookies from certain websites. You’ll find these settings when you click the Manage Exceptions button under Cookies and Site Data.
Allow Third-Party Cookies in Less Common macOS Browsers
As you can see, you’ll generally find your cookies settings within your browser’s privacy preferences. If you still can’t locate the appropriate setting within the app you’re using, you may need to check the developer’s website for more information.
Cookies Are Necessary
In most cases, you can allow third-party cookies without creating any serious security risks. Most browsers offer intuitive options within their privacy settings that let you quickly alter and customize your preferences.
Blocking tracking cookies—often by enabling tracking prevention—won’t usually render a website nonfunctional and is a good way to weed out less-essential files. If you do want to block most third-party cookies and still use the internet without too much frustration, utilizing customized preferences to allow certain sites is a viable option.
Ultimately, cookies are neither good nor bad, but some websites will attempt to use them for nefarious purposes. Developers design modern browsers with this in mind.
