How to Clear Safari Cache on iPhone (Without Losing Passwords)

Let’s kill the biggest worry first: clearing Safari’s cache does not delete your saved passwords. Ever. Your passwords live in iCloud Keychain (the Passwords app on recent iOS versions), which is a completely separate system from Safari’s cache, cookies, and history. You can wipe Safari down to bare metal and every saved login will still autofill afterwards.

What you can lose is your active login sessions, meaning you’ll be signed out of sites and have to log back in. Annoying, but two seconds of autofill fixes it. In this guide I’ll show you the full clear, the surgical single-site clear (my favorite, and the one most guides skip), and how to decide which you actually need.

The Quick Version: Three Ways to Clear Safari Data

Method	Where	What it deletes	Best for
Full clear	Settings > Apps > Safari > Clear History and Website Data	History, cache, cookies, everything	Starting totally fresh
Single-site clear	Settings > Apps > Safari > Advanced > Website Data	Cache and cookies for one site only	Fixing one broken website
Website data only	Same Advanced screen, Remove All Website Data	Cache and cookies, keeps history	Freeing space, keeping your history list

Note the path: on iOS 26, app settings moved into Settings > Apps. On iOS 17 and earlier, Safari sits directly in the main Settings list. Same screens once you’re in. (More on what moved in our guide to clearing cache on iOS 26.)

Method 1: The Full Clear

1. Open Settings, tap Apps, then Safari.
2. Scroll down and tap Clear History and Website Data.
3. Choose a time range: last hour, today, today and yesterday, or all history. Recent iOS versions ask this every time, which is genuinely useful. Broke something an hour ago? Clear just that hour.
4. If you use Tab Groups, you’ll also see a toggle to close all tabs. Your call.
5. Tap Clear History.

What survives: passwords (obviously), bookmarks, your Reading List, and AutoFill contact info. What’s gone: browsing history, cached files, and cookies, so expect to sign back into your usual sites. One heads-up: if iCloud syncs Safari across your devices, clearing history here removes it from your Mac and iPad too.

Method 2: The Surgical Single-Site Clear (Underrated)

Nine times out of ten, you don’t need the nuclear option. One site is acting up: a page renders half-broken, a login loop won’t quit, a shop cart won’t update. You can wipe just that site’s data and leave the rest of your browsing untouched:

1. Go to Settings > Apps > Safari.
2. Scroll to the bottom and tap Advanced.
3. Tap Website Data. Give it a few seconds to load; this screen lists every site storing data on your phone, sorted by size.
4. Tap Edit (top right), find the problem site (or use the search bar), and tap the red minus to delete it. Or just swipe left on the entry.

This screen is also weirdly fascinating. On my iPhone, a handful of news sites and one shopping site were hoarding over 100 MB each. If a site you visited once is sitting on tens of megabytes, that’s fair game to delete on sight.

Method 3: Remove All Website Data, Keep Your History

Same Advanced > Website Data screen, but tap Remove All Website Data at the bottom. This clears cache and cookies for every site while leaving your browsing history intact, handy if you rely on history search to re-find pages but want the storage back and a clean cookie slate. You’ll still get logged out of sites, because logouts come from cookie deletion, not history deletion.

So Where Do Passwords Actually Live?

Worth understanding, because it’s why this whole article’s promise holds. Saved logins are stored in iCloud Keychain, end-to-end encrypted and synced across your Apple devices. On iOS 18 and later they surfaced in the dedicated Passwords app. Safari just reads from Keychain when it autofills; it doesn’t keep its own copy in the cache. That’s why no combination of clearing history, cache, or website data can touch them. The only way to delete a saved password is deliberately, inside the Passwords app.

Cookies are the confusing middle ground. A cookie can keep you logged in to a site, so deleting it feels like losing a password. But the password itself is still safe in Keychain, and autofill will refill the login form the moment you revisit. If you want to go deeper on locking down your browsing, our roundup of iPhone security apps pairs nicely with a fresh cookie slate.

Does Clearing Safari Cache Actually Help?

Sometimes. Here’s my honest list of when it’s worth doing:

• A page loads broken or outdated: yes, usually fixes it. Try the single-site clear first.
• Login loops or endless redirects: yes, that’s classic stale-cookie behavior.
• Storage pressure: somewhat. Safari data is often a few hundred MB, nice but not huge. The real space hogs are elsewhere, and our guide to freeing up iPhone storage beyond clearing cache ranks them all.
• “My iPhone is slow”: mostly placebo. Restart the phone instead.

Also remember Safari’s cache is separate from every other browser’s. Chrome keeps its own pile in its own app container, with its own clearing menu, which we cover in how to clear Chrome cache on iPhone. And for the all-apps overview, start with the main how to clear cache on iPhone guide.

FAQ

Will I lose my saved passwords if I clear Safari’s history and website data?

No. Passwords are stored in iCloud Keychain, separate from Safari’s browsing data. You’ll be signed out of websites, but autofill will sign you right back in. Bookmarks and Reading List survive too.

Why is “Clear History and Website Data” grayed out on my iPhone?

Almost always Screen Time. Go to Settings > Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions > Content Restrictions > Web Content and set it to Unrestricted. Restricted web content disables history clearing. On a work or school phone, an MDM profile can also lock it, and you’ll need whoever manages the device.

How do I clear cache for just one website in Safari?

Settings > Apps > Safari > Advanced > Website Data, then swipe left on the site you want gone. This is the best first move when a single site misbehaves, because everything else stays logged in.

Does clearing Safari data on my iPhone affect my Mac?

Clearing history does, if Safari syncs via iCloud: history disappears everywhere. Cached files and website data are local though, so each device’s cache has to be cleared on that device.