Are you curious about what cookies are running on your website (or another website)? CookieScript’s Cookie Scanner s a popular cookie inspector tool. But, you can also perform a manual check using your favorite web browser.
Inspect Cookies in Google Chrome
Checking cookies on your Google Chrome web browser is fairly straightforward. The steps are as follows:
Step 1. Right-click on your browser window. If you are running Windows, you will want to right-click on the window of your website. If you are running Apple macOS, you can either use a two-finger click (with the Magic Trackpad) or use the control+click method.
Step 2. Choose ‘Inspect.’ After you right-click, a window will appear giving you several options. At the bottom of this list will be an Inspect option. Select this and a split-screen window will appear. You will now be in the Chrome Developer Console.
Step 3. Choose the Applications tab. Depending on the size of your screen, you may need to expand your tab options at the top by clicking on the ‘>>’ symbol.
Step 4. Select ‘Cookies.’ When you expand the Applications tab, several new menu options will appear. You will want to look for Cookies under the Storage tab.
Step 5. Check installed cookies. You will be presented with a series of columns that will allow you to check if the website’s cookies are secure and whether third-party cookies are running on the site. In the Session tab, you can see where cookies are stored. You can also see which cookies are session cookies and which are persistent cookies (those that operate for a duration of time).
Inspect Cookies in Mozilla Firefox
Checking cookies on your Mozilla’s Firefox web browser is slightly easier compared to Chrome. Try the following steps:
Step 1. Right-click anywhere in the browser window. On Windows, you can right-click anywhere in the browser window to bring up a menu of options. On macOS, you can either hold down ‘control’ and then click with the mouse or use the two-finger click with your Magic Trackpad. This will lead you to Step 2.
Step 2. Choose ‘Inspect Element.’ After right-clicking on your Firefox browser window, you will be presented with several options. Choose Inspect Element from this list.
Step 3. Choose ‘Storage’ in the menu bar. At the very top of the split-screen window, you will be presented with several taps. Choose Storage to access the Cookies menu.
Step 4. Click on ‘Cookies.’ After clicking on the Storage menu option, a list of sub-menus will appear on the left-hand side. Choose Cookies from this menu.
Step 5. Check the status of cookies. When you expand Cookies, a sub-menu will appear, allowing you to choose a particular domain. In the ‘Path’ field you can examine where a particular cookie is located; the path may show as a ‘/‘ symbol, which indicates the cookie is stored on the main index. You can also examine whether the cookies deployed are session cookies or persistent cookies by viewing the ‘Expires / Max-Age’ tab.
How to read the list of cookies?
There are several attributes available for each cookie:
You can read more about some specific cookie attributes: HttpOnly cookie attribute, SameSite cookie attribute.
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