Bug 284806 – Web Inspector: Enabling developer tools causes Safari on MacOS to randomly drop cookies

• Status: RESOLVED
• Resolution: DUPLICATE
• Component: Web Inspector

This doesn't seem to impact a lot of people, but for those of us with the problem, it is very significant. This problem goes back to at least MacOS 14, and possibly even MacOS 13. 
Every couple of weeks, it seems to randomly delete or reset all of my browser cookies. It has happened 3 or 4 times, and the most recent instance was while I was using it. All of a sudden, I am logged out of all my websites (Google, Youtube, Shopify, all of 'em). I live in the EU, so all of my cookie preferences for every website have been reset, too.

But, when I go to settings, privacy and then manage website data, I see all the cookies, some from websites I know I haven't used in many months. So, the cookies are still there, but each website behaves as if they are not. When this happens, I have to log in again for all the sites I use, and also all my website preferences are wiped clean, even though the cookies are still there.

Others have reported this problem, too. See this Reddit thread on the issue: https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/17m0i4p/safari_randomly_deleting_or_resetting_all_cookies/

the common factor is having developer tools turned on in Safari. I never have this problem with these tools turned off, but once enabled, it will inevitably happen, sometimes multiple times in a day. As a web developer, I've had to switch my primary browser over to Firefox as a result.

[Qianlang Chen]

Thank you for the report, Nick. I believe this was recently fixed in https://webkit.org/b/245491. The fix is available in Safari Technology Preview 209. Please test it and let us know how it goes!

[Qianlang Chen]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 245491 ***

thanks, that is great news :)

(In reply to nick from comment #3)
> thanks, that is great news :)

so far, I've not seen the problem since updating a few weeks ago!