chrome.browsingData

Manifest

You must declare the "browsingData" permission in the extension manifest to use this API.

      {
        "name": "My extension",
        ...
        "permissions": [
          "browsingData",
        ],
        ...
      }
      

Usage

The simplest use-case for this API is a a time-based mechanism for clearing a user's browsing data. Your code should provide a timestamp which indicates the historical date after which the user's browsing data should be removed. This timestamp is formatted as the number of milliseconds since the Unix epoch (which can be retrieved from a JavaScript Date object via the getTime method).

For example, to clear all of a user's browsing data from the last week, you might write code as follows:

var callback = function () {
        // Do something clever here once data has been removed.
      };
      
      var millisecondsPerWeek = 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 7;
      var oneWeekAgo = (new Date()).getTime() - millisecondsPerWeek;
      chrome.browsingData.remove({
        "since": oneWeekAgo
      }, {
        "appcache": true,
        "cache": true,
        "cacheStorage": true,
        "cookies": true,
        "downloads": true,
        "fileSystems": true,
        "formData": true,
        "history": true,
        "indexedDB": true,
        "localStorage": true,
        "pluginData": true,
        "passwords": true,
        "serviceWorkers": true,
        "webSQL": true
      }, callback);

The chrome.browsingData.remove method allows you to remove various types of browsing data with a single call, and will be much faster than calling multiple more specific methods. If, however, you only want to clear one specific type of browsing data (cookies, for example), the more granular methods offer a readable alternative to a call filled with JSON.

var callback = function () {
        // Do something clever here once data has been removed.
      };
      
      var millisecondsPerWeek = 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 7;
      var oneWeekAgo = (new Date()).getTime() - millisecondsPerWeek;
      chrome.browsingData.removeCookies({
        "since": oneWeekAgo
      }, callback);

If the user is syncing their data, chrome.browsingData.remove may automatically rebuild the cookie for the Sync account after clearing it. This is to ensure that Sync can continue working, so that the data can be eventually deleted on the server. However the more specific chrome.browsingData.removeCookies can be used to clear the cookie for the Sync account, and Sync will be paused in this case.

Important: Removing browsing data involves a good deal of heavy lifting in the background, and can take tens of seconds to complete, depending on a user's profile. You should use the callback mechanism to keep your users up to date on the removal's status.

Specific Origins

To remove data for a specific origin or to exclude a set of origins from deletion, you can use the RemovalOptions.origins and RemovalOptions.excludeOrigins parameters. They can only be applied to cookies, cache, and storage (CacheStorage, FileSystems, IndexedDB, LocalStorage, PluginData, ServiceWorkers, and WebSQL).

chrome.browsingData.remove({
        "origins": ["https://www.example.com"]
      }, {
        "cacheStorage": true,
        "cookies": true,
        "fileSystems": true,
        "indexedDB": true,
        "localStorage": true,
        "pluginData": true,
        "serviceWorkers": true,
        "webSQL": true
      }, callback);

Important: As cookies are scoped more broadly than other types of storage, deleting cookies for an origin will delete all cookies of the registrable domain. For example, deleting data for https://www.example.com will delete cookies with a domain of .example.com as well.

Origin Types

Adding an originTypes property to the API's options object allows you to specify which types of origins ought to be effected. Currently, origins are divided into three categories:

• unprotectedWeb covers the general case of websites that users visit without taking any special action. If you don't specify an originTypes, the API defaults to removing data from unprotected web origins.
• protectedWeb covers those web origins that have been installed as hosted applications. Installing Angry Birds, for example, protects the origin http://chrome.angrybirds.com, and removes it from the unprotectedWeb category. Please do be careful when triggering deletion of data for these origins: make sure your users know what they're getting, as this will irrevocably remove their game data. No one wants to knock tiny pig houses over more often than necessary.
• extension covers origins under the chrome-extensions: scheme. Removing extension data is, again, something you should be very careful about.

We could adjust the previous example to remove only data from protected websites as follows:

var callback = function () {
        // Do something clever here once data has been removed.
      };
      
      var millisecondsPerWeek = 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 7;
      var oneWeekAgo = (new Date()).getTime() - millisecondsPerWeek;
      chrome.browsingData.remove({
        "since": oneWeekAgo,
        "originTypes": {
          "protectedWeb": true
        }
      }, {
        "appcache": true,
        "cache": true,
        "cacheStorage": true,
        "cookies": true,
        "downloads": true,
        "fileSystems": true,
        "formData": true,
        "history": true,
        "indexedDB": true,
        "localStorage": true,
        "serverBoundCertificates": true,
        "pluginData": true,
        "passwords": true,
        "serviceWorkers": true,
        "webSQL": true
      }, callback);

Seriously: Be careful with protectedWeb and extension. These are destructive operations that your users will write angry email about if they're not well-informed about what to expect when your extension removes data on their behalf.

Examples

Samples for the browsingData API are available on the samples page.

Summary