Cookie Jar

About

Automatically blocks tracking and advertising cookies while keeping you logged in everywhere. 100% on-device. No accounts.

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Cookie Jar puts you in control of what websites store in your browser — without breaking the sites you rely on.

Every time you visit a website, it quietly sets dozens of cookies. Some are essential: they keep you logged in, remember your preferences, and make the site work. Others silently track your activity across the web, build behavioral profiles, and feed advertising networks — without ever asking permission. Cookie Jar sorts them out automatically and blocks the ones you don't want, in real time, on every page you visit.


WHAT IT DOES

Cookie Jar reads each cookie by name and classifies it into one of eight categories using a built-in pattern library that recognizes cookies from 50+ ad platforms, analytics services, identity providers, and web frameworks. Cookies you want are left alone. Cookies you don't are blocked before they're stored.

Classification happens entirely on your device — no cookie names, domains, or metadata are ever sent to any server.


COOKIE CATEGORIES

- Necessary
Core site functionality — security tokens, navigation state, CSRF protection. Always allowed. These make websites work.

- Session
Temporary in-tab state — shopping carts, form progress, video playback position. They disappear when you close your browser and cause no harm.

- Authentication
Keeps you logged into every site you use. Always preserved so you're never unexpectedly signed out.

- Functional
Your saved preferences — language, region, dark/light mode, layout choices. These stay within the site you're visiting and don't follow you elsewhere.

- Tracking
Behavioral profiling across sessions — cross-site tracking scripts and ad network beacons built specifically to follow your activity across the entire web.

- Advertising
Ad targeting cookies set by ad networks (not the site you're on) to track your browsing history and serve you retargeted ads everywhere you go.

- Analytics
Usage measurement — web analytics platforms, session recording tools, and similar services that aggregate your behavior into profiles that may be shared or sold to third parties.

- Third-Party
Cookies from embedded external services — social media buttons, map widgets, live chat tools, affiliate trackers, and other content loaded from external domains.


FEATURES

- Real-time blocking
Cookies are intercepted as they're set — not cleaned up after the page has already loaded. Cookies set dynamically by JavaScript are caught too, so there are no gaps in coverage.

- Consent banner suppression
Cookie Jar automatically hides the "Accept all / Manage preferences" overlays that appear on most websites. Supports 20+ consent management platforms — including consent banners rendered inside iframes, which most blockers miss entirely.

- Login protection
Major identity providers and SSO services are fully excluded from cookie management so your login flows are never interrupted. OAuth redirects work exactly as they should.

- Per-domain pause
Disable Cookie Jar for a specific site with one click from the popup, without touching your global preferences. Useful for sites that legitimately need stricter cookie access, or any time you want to step back temporarily.

- Cookie Statistics
See exactly what's been blocked across your entire browsing history — visualized as charts by website, over time, or broken down by category. Filter by today, this week, this month, this year, or all time. Export your full blocked cookie log as a CSV file at any time.

- Customize Rules
Fine-tune precisely what gets blocked:
• Per-domain overrides — allow analytics on a site you trust while blocking it everywhere else, or block a category on a specific site that your global settings normally allow
• Block by cookie name pattern — use wildcards to target specific cookies by name (e.g. _ga* blocks _ga, _ga_abc, and any other name starting with _ga). Common patterns for major analytics and ad trackers are provided as one-click presets
• Block persistent cookies — automatically block any cookie with an expiry longer than a chosen number of days, regardless of its category

- Settings export & import
Back up your full preferences as a JSON file and restore them instantly on a new device, after reinstalling, or to share a configuration with someone else.

- Badge counter
The extension icon shows how many cookies were blocked on the current page, so you always know what's happening behind the scenes.

- Keyboard shortcut
Open Cookie Jar instantly with Ctrl+Shift+Y on Windows and Linux, or Cmd+Shift+Y on Mac.

- Cookie education dashboard
The full-page view includes a detailed, plain-language guide to every cookie category — what each type does, why it matters, and real-world examples from sites you already use. Understand the difference between a session cookie that keeps your cart intact and an advertising cookie that follows you across hundreds of websites.


PRIVACY

Cookie Jar collects nothing and sends nothing.

All data the extension generates — your preferences, custom rules, per-domain overrides, and the blocked cookie log used for Statistics — is stored exclusively in your browser using Chrome's local storage API. It never leaves your device and is not accessible to anyone but you.

The extension itself contains no analytics, no crash reporting, and no advertising integrations of any kind. Cookie values are never read. Only cookie names, domains, and metadata are examined — locally — to perform classification. There are no external API calls.


PERMISSIONS EXPLAINED

Cookie Jar requests only the permissions necessary to function:

• cookies — to read cookie metadata and block unwanted cookies before they're stored
• activeTab — to read the current page's URL so per-domain rules can be applied
• tabs / webNavigation — to update the blocked-cookie badge counter as you navigate between pages
• storage — to save your preferences, custom rules, and blocked cookie log locally on your device
• scripting — to inject the consent banner suppression script at page load time, before banners appear
• host_permissions (<all_urls>) — required to intercept cookies and suppress consent banners across all websites you visit

No browsing history, page content, form data, or passwords are ever accessed.


WHO IT'S FOR

Cookie Jar is for anyone who wants a cleaner, more private browsing experience without giving up the convenience of staying logged in everywhere. It works quietly in the background — you don't need to think about it. If you want to dig deeper, the statistics panel and customize rules are there. If you just want to install it and forget about it, the defaults handle everything sensibly from day one.

No accounts. No subscriptions. No data collection. Just a cookie jar that keeps the right cookies in and the wrong ones out.