Cookies are small files stored by websites on your computer that allow the site to store information on your computer. Most cookies are perfectly safe and useful, for instance to store your shopping cart so that you can come back later without losing the items you’ve picked out.
Most websites also use cookies to allow you to stay logged in to their site, so you can stay logged in, even if you restart your computer.
Cookies typically have an intended lifespan, after which your browser will delete them automatically.
By default, CCleaner is set to remove almost all detected cookies and so this means you will need to log in to these sites again, rebuild your shopping cart, and otherwise return to the state you were in.
Fortunately, if you want to stay logged in to these sites, or avoid losing this data, there's an easy workaround.
Go to Options > Cookies and drag the cookie for the site concerned (e.g. mail.google.com for Gmail) to the right hand panel. You may also use the -> button to move the highlighted cookie to the Cookies to Keep list.
You can also search in either list for the desired cookies by using the search bar above ‘Cookies on Computer’ and ‘Cookies to Keep’ respectively. For instance, searching for ”‘yah” might bring up www.yahoo.com, login.yahoo.com, and mail.yahoo.com.
You may also right-click the Cookies to Keep list, click Add, and enter a site that you’d like to protect cookies from, even if CCleaner does not currently detect them. For instance, you could enter *.google.com to keep any cookies from sites ending in ‘google.com’ from being deleted.
Now you can clean your browser, and you will stay logged in to your chosen sites.
A small number of sites are already entered into the Cookies to Keep list by default for the convenience of our users; if you do not use a site or want it to be cleaned automatically, simply remove it from the list by using the <- button or right-clicking on it and deleting it.
You can use the Intelligent Cookie Scan function to also add detected cookies for certain commonly-used websites easily and efficiently. You can find out more about the Intelligent Cookie Scan here.
