Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

"Clear private data" does nothing. Only closing Firefox clears it.

more options

If I go to settings and have all the options checked in "clear private data" it does not actually clear anything. Websites still have me logged in. Only if I close Firefox and reopen it does it actually clear all the cache and cookies. This would not normally be an issue, but Firefox takes about 3 minutes to connect to the first website I try to connect to when it is first started. So, having to restart Firefox every time to clear data is a nuisance. I am updated to the latest version of Firefox.

If I go to settings and have all the options checked in "clear private data" it does not actually clear anything. Websites still have me logged in. Only if I close Firefox and reopen it does it actually clear all the cache and cookies. This would not normally be an issue, but Firefox takes about 3 minutes to connect to the first website I try to connect to when it is first started. So, having to restart Firefox every time to clear data is a nuisance. I am updated to the latest version of Firefox.

All Replies (2)

more options

Hi Tael, do you mean the "Clear private data on exit" feature? If you enable that, a "Quit" item appears toward the bottom of the menu to trigger it. As far as I know, that's the only way to trigger it.

I'm not aware of a "Clear private data now" feature like the desktop versions of Firefox. I don't know whether that would be added in the future; work is underway on a replacement for the current Firefox for Android, so it might not happen in this browser. See next reply

Does it help at all to use private tabs for sites whose private data you want to flush frequently? See: Private Browsing on Firefox for Android.

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer trɔe

more options

Whoops, that Settings screen is so long I completely missed "Clear private data" below "Advanced".

When I use that to clear cookies and request the page from the server, Firefox doesn't send (and the server doesn't receive) the old cookies. So that is working for me.

Test page: https://www.jeffersonscher.com/res/cook.php