Delete cookies automatically when you close a tab

Chrome can clear cookies when you quit it, but not when you close a tab. For cleanup per tab you need an extension, and the details that matter are how it decides what counts as one site, which sites it keeps, and whether it reaches partitioned cookies.

Chrome's own setting works on quit

Open Settings, then Privacy and security, Site settings, Additional content settings and On-device site data, or paste chrome://settings/content/siteData into the address bar. Choose "Delete data sites have saved to your device when you close all windows". Under Customized behaviors you can list sites that are always allowed to keep their data, or sites that are always cleared when Chrome closes.

Chrome's On-device site data settings with Delete data sites have saved to your device when you close all windows selected — Chrome's setting, which waits until every Chrome window is closed.

That is fine if you quit Chrome every evening. If it stays open for days, nothing is cleared in between, and every site you visited keeps its cookies until then.

What a tab-close cleaner has to get right

It should treat a site as its registrable domain, so mail.google.com and accounts.google.com count as one site, and wait until no tab in any window still has that site open.
A short delay after the last tab closes means a tab you reopen with Ctrl+Shift+T keeps you signed in.
A keep list holds the sites you want to stay signed in to, and a second list for sites to keep only until the next restart is handy for sites you only need for the day.
Partitioned cookies need handling too. Embedded videos, chat widgets and trackers store cookies in a separate partition for each top-level site, and a cleaner that only deletes reddit.com's own cookies leaves behind the video player cookie stored under reddit.com.

With Auto Delete Cookies on Tab Close

This is the extension I built for it after Cookie AutoDelete stopped running in Chrome.

After installing, type the sites you want to stay signed in to on the welcome page, separated by commas, and click Add to Keep always.
Close a site's last tab and about 15 seconds later its cookies are deleted, partitioned ones included. Reopening it within those seconds cancels the cleanup.
On any site, the toolbar popup shows how many cookies it has and puts it on Keep always or Keep until restart in one click.
The Activity tab in settings lists every cleanup with the site and the number of cookies.

The Activity tab listing two tab-close cleanups: 16 cookies from reddit.com and 10 from imdb.com — Two real cleanups from a test run. A third site in that run was on the keep list, so it does not appear.

Without Pro there is no limit on either list, and it also does partitioned cookies, a sweep at startup, the activity log and Incognito. Pro adds wildcard and regex rules, clearing of local storage, IndexedDB, caches and service workers, scheduled cleanup, and import and export of your lists. Partitioned cookies need Chrome 119 or newer.

It works after the fact: cookies are deleted once you leave a site, not blocked while you are on it, and it does nothing about cookie banners.

Updated 14 October 2026.