Google-chrome – Chrome “clear cookies on exit” feature does not work

As far as I know (and I have just run Incognito mode to verify this, although things may have changed since the question was posted), you cannot see what cookies Incognito mode is keeping - the ones you see in that dialog are ones you had prior to running Incognito mode.

Since the two are supposed to be separate, one mode will not delete the other mode's cookies even if you visit the same site, i.e., if you go to Twitter (or if there's a twitter widget on a page) in regular browsing you may pick up a Twitter cookie, but Incognito mode will not remove that if you launch it later and subsequently close it.

If you can still reproduce this issue, make sure you do not have any extensions that may be causing this cookie to be created, and that your start pages do not have any Twitter widgets on them.

(I had a similar issue where "Keep local data only until I quit my browser" did not work for me, because one of my extensions was keeping the browser open. Either disabling such extensions or "Continue running background applications when Google Chrome is closed" should fix that problem.)

Chrome's “Clear Browsing Data” does not clear cookies for open incognito tabs?

No, incognito data is wiped when the tab(s)/window(s) are closed.

I open a fresh Chrome (31.0.1650.63 m on Windows 7), no previously kept tabs ("Continue where I left off" is off), no cookies.

… In incognito tab 2, I go to the same site S. The 'Network' tab of DevTools shows me that the first request sends cookie X. This seems incorrect to me.

I know what you mean; it seems logical that using incognito would allow for cookies to be independent so that you could open a couple of windows to the same site and log in with different usernames. However, that is not how Chrome’s incognito implementation works.

When you open an incognito window, Chrome creates a new and separate instance of itself which behaves just like the regular version in every way, except that it does not store cached files on disk or record anything in the logs. Because it behaves like the regular browser, it shares cookies and other session information among the open tabs and windows. That is why all of the incognito tabs that have the same page loaded will be able to see the same cookies.

When close the last incognito tab, Chrome wipes out the cookies and other session information. Until then, they are retained.

(It seems like "Clear Browsing Data" is running off of a non-incognito tab, and that it therefore cannot access the cookies of incognito tabs. Or something like that.)

All browser-related tabs like settings, extensions, plugins, history, downloads, etc. run in a regular, non-incognito window and have access to the whole browser, including incognito windows.

Is this a Chrome bug?

No, it is intended behavior.

If so, is it already reported somewhere? If not, can anyone point me to the relevant documentation or standards?

Yes, this was reported in 2010, but was closed. Further, there are discussions which indicate that this is normal behavior and will not be changed in the foreseeable future. ^[1][2][3][4] You can check up on changes or file a new report (though they might very well just close it as a duplicate of the previous one).