Garmin Launched It's First Screenless Smart Band Today, and I Tried It Out

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For all the Garmin fans out there who have been utterly ruthless about leaks, today is your day: Garmin has launched the Cirqa Smart Band for $199.99. After months of speculation, it’s finally official, and I've spent the last few hours wearing one. Here's everything we know so far about Garmin's first screenless smart band, along with my first impressions.

Garmin CIRQA™ Smart Band

at Garmin

at Garmin

My first impressions of the Garmin Cirqa Smart Band

The Cirqa is Garmin's entry into the increasingly crowded arena of screenless smart band fitness trackers. On paper, it looks like a middle ground between the Fitbit Air ($99.99) and Whoop (which famously has tiered subscription-based pricing; Whoop charges $239/year for its medium-tier subscription, including a Whoop 5.0 device). My colleague Beth Skwarecki compares those two bands here, and I look forward to seeing how she thinks the Cirqa fits into the market.

The pitch, in Garmin's words, is that its band "reduces distraction while still delivering full-day health and fitness tracking." You get 24/7 monitoring of heart rate, stress, Body Battery, Pulse Ox, and skin temperature, all viewable after the fact in the Garmin Connect app. The Cirqa automatically detects and classifies your workouts, and allegedly gets better at that classification over time as you go into the Garmin Connect app and confirm or correct what it thinks you were doing.

At long last: the Cirqa. Credit: Meredith Dietz

It comes in four colors: Black, “Captain” (navy) blue, French Gray, and Mauve. It has fabric straps in S/M and L/XL sizes. There's a Velcro-style design to adjust sizing. The strap uses quick-release pin connectors rather than a traditional buckle, and threads through a small metal loop.

Physically, the sensor module is long—47mm, which happens to match the diameter of the Forerunner 970's face. Whoop, by comparison, is similarly wide but noticeably shorter top to bottom. Garmin has a reputation for generally catering to bigger wrists, and the Cirqa upholds that pattern. I'd say the design lands closest to the Polar Loop, rather than the Fitbit Air or Whoop. And while this is a mere hours-long impression talking, the long sensor doesn't seem like a drawback, and Garmin has made a strong case for the device at least in terms of lightweight comfort.

The Cirqa next to my Garmin Forerunner 970. Credit: Meredith Dietz

Beth sent along some photos of the Fitbit Air, Whoop 5.0/MG, Polar Loop, and Amazfit Helio Strap, so you can get a sense of how the Cirqa stacks up visually.

The Fitbit Air on the left; Whoop 5.0/MG on the right. Credit: Beth Skwarecki

The Polar Loop on the left; Amazfit Helio Strap on the right. Credit: Beth Skwarecki

No subscription (for now)

Garmin is leaning hard into "no subscription required" for this device at launch. I asked a rep directly about whether that could change down the line. With standard disclaimers about not speaking to any future roadmap, Garmin says it won't suddenly wall off features that are free today. Any future paid tier would be additive, with new features available behind a subscription, rather than existing stuff pulled behind a paywall.

This tracks with how Garmin has generally behaved with Connect+ so far. Remember, a screen-free band means the Garmin Connect app is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Things like deeper training insights, expanded badges/gamification, and so on would all live in the app. None of this is confirmed, but it's a fairly predictable shape a future paywall would take, so I'll be keeping an eye on it for you.

The Cirqa's sensor is basically the Gen 4 "plus"

The optical sensor inside Cirqa is Garmin's older Elevate Gen 4 hardware, not the Gen 5 sensor found in Garmin's newer watches, and not the one in Garmin's own Index Sleep Monitor, which launched last year for tracking heart rate, Pulse Ox, stress, breathing rate, and skin temperature (basically everything short of ECG support).

But wait—there's more. Cirqa may not get a Gen 5 sensor, but it does add skin temperature to the older Gen 4 base, which functionally makes it something like a Gen 4-plus (my unofficial phrasing). The skin temperature reading is crucial for women's health tracking and Garmin's Natural Cycles partnership.

Still, to Garmin fans, an older sensor might feel like a disappointment given all the rumors and speculation over this smart band launch. Whether it results in disappointing data is something I'll be testing over the next couple of weeks.

Comparison to the Garmin Forerunner 970's Gen 5 sensor; the Cirqa's physical side button. Credit: Meredith Dietz

The button on the Cirqa is exciting for smart band fans

Screen-free trackers typically give you nothing to physically interact with (Whoop and the Fitbit Air are both buttonless). This makes the Cirqa's side button mildly exciting: Tapping a button is so much easier than going into an app or waiting for activity detection you later need to edit for accuracy.

Here’s everything I know about the button so far:

• One press starts (and later stops) whatever activity you've set as your "favorite" in Garmin Connect, with the module vibrating and an LED flashing green while it records.

• Alarm snooze (press) and stop (hold)

• Pairing mode (triple-press or ~6s hold)

• Optional HR broadcast toggle (3s hold, if enabled)

• Silence Find My Band

You can't pause mid-activity from the button itself, but if you do press "stop," the LED flashes red until you save, resume, or discard the activity in the app. How this is functionally different from pausing, I'll let you know after my testing.

Is the Cirqa a good value?

The Cirqa is $199.99, with an optional armband accessory for $59.99 if you'd rather wear it above the elbow than on your wrist (useful for people who find wrist-based trackers get in the way of their workouts). Frankly, this premium price is consistent with Garmin's brand these days. Garmin seems to be betting that its ecosystem (and, in the case of this smart band, its no-subscription promise) are worth charging a premium for right out the gate.

Here's a cursory overview of where the Cirqa stands when judged against the competition:

• The Fitbit Air launched at $99.99, with an optional Google Health Premium subscription.

• The Amazfit Helio Strap is $99.99 as well, with no mandatory subscription.

• Polar's Loop sits at $199, like the Cirqa.

• Whoop—aka the device everyone in this category is implicitly compared against—doesn't sell hardware outright at all. Its cheapest tier, Whoop One, is $199 a year for the current Whoop 5.0 hardware, with Peak at $239 and the ECG-equipped Whoop MG only available on the $359-a-year Life tier.

Garmin's pitch is that by buying Cirqa once for $199.99, you'll match a full year of Whoop's cheapest plan, with nothing more owed. And of course, Garmin's advantage isn't really the hardware. The assumption is that if you already live in that ecosystem—training load, HRV status, recovery, VO2 max, all the metrics Garmin fans feel they can't live without—you'll pay a premium to keep all that data unified, rather than start over somewhere cheaper. For the Cirqa specifically, a Garmin rep told me that feature-for-feature, the Cirqa is comparable to the Venu 4 smartwatch, which costs $549.99.

Ultimately, whether Garmin's features are truly worth an extra hundred dollars depends on how deeply embedded you already are in Garmin's world. For someone shopping this category cold, with no existing Garmin gear, it's a much harder sell when there are competing devices selling for $99.99.

The Best Android Apps You Can’t Get on the Google Play Store

While Apple has recently been forced to offer alternative app stores in the EU, they've been around much longer on Android: The more open nature of Google's mobile operating system means it's easier to access apps that haven't been specifically Play Store approved, and the quality and breadth of these apps is better than you might have realized.

Leading the way here is F-Droid, a repository of Android apps released as free and open source software, with an emphasis on security and privacy—both the code and the permissions of the apps are presented transparently, and there aren't the usual Google tracking and analysis extras on top.

You don't get the full Play Store security protection with F-Droid, and you are relying on the F-Droid team keeping its operations safe and secure—something it has a strong record in. However, down the years this alternative app store has proved a reliable source of safe and trustworthy apps, including the recommended ones below—just be sure to stick to apps that are well-known and frequently updated.

This is a timely moment to be recommending F-Droid apps, because the database is under threat from Google's stricter policies on apps from outside the Play Store, coming into force in several months time. It's going to mean more verification and less privacy for developers, and a more convoluted process for sideloading apps (these will still be allowed, but you'll have to wait 24 hours for each install).

F-Droid has put up a campaign page you can read through to understand the issues at stake, and you can sign your support to help it battle this "existential threat." In the meantime, the best way to support F-Droid and its openness is by making use of the platform, and the excellent apps below.

Head to the F-Droid site to get the app store up and running, which then gives you access to the app library, including those here. Once these apps are installed, they'll appear in the Android app drawer as normal.

Paperize

Credit: Lifehacker

Paperize is a polished, stylish wallpaper changer that lets you switch between your pick of backdrops for the lock screen and the home screen on a schedule. You choose the pictures and the timings, and you get more control than with the default settings inside Android. The app is smart enough to be able to adjust images to fit the dimensions of your device, and there are some handy effect and filter options as well if you need them.

OpenTracks

Credit: Lifehacker

OpenTracks is a fitness tracking app that respects your privacy—you don't even need to connect it to the web or sign up for an account. You can use it to track runs, hikes, and cycles, and plot them on a map with details like distance covered and average speed.

What you don't get with this app is full support for wearables and fitness trackers, though you can sync data over Bluetooth from certain heart rate monitors and cycling computers. Your phone is used as the main "tracker" device, so you'll need to always have it with you.

Breezy Weather

Credit: Lifehacker

There are no shortage of weather apps out there, but Breezy Weather makes a solid claim for being your default. It's able to pull meteorological data from numerous public sources, and then presents the data in a variety of interesting and engaging ways.

It definitely holds its own against the default weather apps you get with Pixel and Galaxy phones, and there are tons of customization options here (including which weather info gets shown and where), as well as the all-important widgets for your homescreen.

Chrono

Credit: Lifehacker

Every alarm, clock, and timer app is much like another, right? To a certain extent, but Chrono has an elegance and an intuitiveness that not many other apps of its type have. From split times in the stopwatch to time zones in the clock, there's a lot to explore.

Some of the touches I like here are the alarm filters —see active, snoozed, and disabled alarms in a tap—and the presets in the timer section, to quickly launch a meditation or workout (for example). You get full control over the color scheme of the app, too.

HeliBoard

Credit: Lifehacker

F-Droid does keyboards too, and with HeliBoard you have a keyboard that's fully customizable and flexible and yet which can work fully offline too—so none of your keystrokes or typing patterns are getting beamed back to a data server somewhere.

Among the tweaks you can make to the keyboard are the style and the layout of the keys, and the colors used. You can add toolbars and dictionaries, configure swipes and long presses, and add sounds and vibrations. It's comprehensive, as well as being private.

Auxio

Credit: Lifehacker

Auxio is a "simple, rational" music player that will take you back to the days before streaming music. It focuses exclusively on local files stored on your own device, which means spotty internet access is no problem, and no one is tracking your musical tastes.

All the basic features you would expect to find are here, and once you've imported your music, it's neatly sorted by its metadata into albums, artists, and genres. There's a built-in equalizer here, as well as a playlist creator, and a handful of customization controls.

Librera Reader

Credit: Lifehacker

Librera Reader can turn your handset into a decent e-reader—it'll be of interest to anyone who has reading to do on their phone. The app can open up a whole host of e-book and document formats, from EPUB to PDF, and has a broad range of customizations available.

You get a choice over how you read your documents and e-books—including top-to-bottom infinite scroll, left-to-right book-style scroll, and even auto-scroll—and there's all the support you would expect for bookmarks, search, and document outlines.

How to Watch Samsung's July Galaxy Unpacked

There are certain times of year we expect major tech events: Samsung hosts Galaxy Unpacked in January or February; Google hosts I/O during May; Apple's WWDC kicks off in June; and, in July, it's, um, Galaxy Unpacked...again. (I suppose that means 2026 is officially halfway through.)

While both events have the same name, Samsung's Galaxy Unpacked events are, indeed, different. February's Galaxy Unpacked, for example, unveiled the new Galaxy S26 series, including the Galaxy S26 Ultra's new Privacy Display. The company also announced its Galaxy Buds 4 and Buds 4 Pro earbuds. July's Unpacked will likely be a bit different. Here's what to expect, and how to watch:

What to expect from Samsung's July 2026 Galaxy Unpacked

Where February's Unpacked was all about Samsung's flagship smartphones, July's Unpacked will likely focus on the company's foldables. As last year's foldables were the Galaxy Z 7 series (including the Galaxy Z Flip 7 and Galaxy Z Fold 7), it's likely the company will release the Galaxy Z 8 series this year, including the Galaxy Z Flip 8, the Galaxy Z Fold 8, and the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra.

There might be more to the story than meets the eye, however. As Mashable reports, the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra might be, for all intents and purposes, the Galaxy Z Fold 8—as in, the expected successor to the Galaxy Z Fold 7. The device Samsung calls the Galaxy Z Fold 8 might actually be a new device entirely, and may feature a wider display, though within a smaller frame. Samsung may also take the opportunity to roll out its next generation of smartwatches—the Galaxy Watch 9 and Galaxy Watch Ultra 2—which rumors suggest won't be changed much from the previous generation.

Mashable also reports that Samsung will likely raise prices on these devices. That's no shock: As AI companies gobble up RAM and storage hardware, those goods are getting more expensive. As such, companies around the world are raising prices to protect their profits. Even Samsung itself said in April that it wouldn't be able to meet memory production demand this year, so it won't be surprising to see the company raise prices on its newest Galaxy devices. That could mean $100 increases across the board: The Fold 8 Ultra could start as high as $2,099, while the Flip 8 could cost $1,199.

How to watch Samsung's July Galaxy Unpacked

Samsung isn't making it hard to watch its latest Galaxy Unpacked event. While the company is holding a limited in-person event for media, anyone with an internet connection can stream the keynote from home.

Galaxy Unpacked kicks off Wednesday, July 22 at 9 a.m. ET. You can watch it on Samsung's official website or on the company's official YouTube channel.

Halliday's New Gen 2 AI Glasses Have a Monochrome HUD Designed for Work

San Francisco-based smart glasses company Halliday just dropped a ton of details about its Gen 2 smart glasses, a set of waveguide display spectacles that project an AI-powered overlay into users' field of view. The glasses are expected to ship in September. They retail for $599, and they're available for pre-order now.

Unlike Meta's Ray-Ban and Oakley glasses, the Halliday G2 glasses have no camera—the selling point is their monochrome display, which overlays a field of green text onto your field of view—think of it more like a personal video game-style heads-up display than a video player.

If you're worried about being called out for wearing smart glasses in public, this pair is stealthy, and even fairly fashionable. But fashion isn't the point either; the focus is on practicality and productivity. "We're not building a tool for entertainment," Halliday's COO and co-founder Carter Hou told me. "It's a tool to help our users improve the efficiency of their work life and their life-life."

Halliday G2 glasses are designed for productivity

Credit: Halliday

While these glasses come with translation software and other expected utilities, the main selling point is "Meeting Flow," an app that provides real-time AI assistance for work meetings. Switch the app on before your 2:30 staff meeting, Halliday promises, and the glasses will monitor the conversation, provide helpful tips, and keep a transcription of what's being said. You'll also be able to automatically "rewind" 30 seconds, so if you miss something that was said, you can instantly catch yourself up—which is great if you tend to zone out.

Another feature Halliday is touting: quick research. With a tap, you'll be able to ask the AI to go over the last few minutes of the meeting, determine if there are any open questions, and provide answers on the fly, without you having to glance down at your phone. Other features aim to use AI tools to help keep your meetings on topic and note when important talking points don't get covered in the meeting.

"Meetings are only the beginning," Hou mused. "In the future we can make interviews more efficient, networking sessions easier, and more. We can take it out of the workspace, like to your next doctor visit, so you can ask your doctor the right questions and know exactly the definitions of any words they use."

Hou sees a future where AI agents embedded in your glasses can listen to all your interactions, determine their purpose, and help you figure out what to do next—so if you happen to be stopped by a cop on the drive home from your productive meeting, it could provide a roadmap of how to best navigate the encounter.

How the Halliday G2 glasses fit into the smart glasses market

Halliday's G2 glasses seem to slot into the same category as the Even Realities G2 glasses—they even have the same name. Both pairs of glasses have a monochrome display that uses waveguide technology, and they're both designed for productivity and everyday use. In my opinion, the Even Realities G2 glasses' signature "Conversate" app sounds a lot like "Meeting Flow," but Halliday is trying to take the concept further. If it works as intended, the company could be giving Even Realities some serious competition in the display-style glasses niche. (Halliday's G2s also feature built-in speakers, while Even Realities' glasses are silent.)

On the negative side, Even Realities G2 glasses feature an app store with a slew of third-party apps for everything from bird watching to reading the Bible. At launch, Halliday G2 glasses will only support the apps that come pre-loaded.

Halliday Gen 2 specs

• Battery life: 12 hours of normal use

• Weight: 49g

• Audio: Onboard speakers

• Display: Monochrome, binocular waveguide display

• Brightness: Up to 1600 Nits

• Resolution: 600x300 per eye

This App Lets You Use Android Auto in Any Car

The driving experience with Android devices has been a bit hit-and-miss down the years, it's fair to say, with features and modes appearing and then disappearing, and Android Auto going through a few changes as well since its 2014 launch. Android Auto was originally available on both phone screens and vehicle dashboards, before being replaced by Google Assistant Driving Mode on handsets. As Gemini emerged, Driving Mode disappeared as well, which means there's now no customized interface for driving on Android devices themselves—everything gets handed off to Android Auto.

However, with the help of Headunit Reloaded Emulator (an app I found thanks to How-To Geek), you can override Google's decision and get Android Auto back on your phone. You can also beam the Android Auto interface to another Android phone or tablet. It's a $4.99 purchase, but it works as advertised—or at least it did with the Pixel and Galaxy phones I was using. If you don't have an Android Auto-compatible dashboard in your car, you can use this to get the same experience on your main handset or on a spare phone or tablet you've got.

I should note that there are some bad reviews of this app on the Play Store, though it worked perfectly fine for me. Users complain about about flaky performance and difficulties with certain phones—so it's worth reading through to see if your handset is mentioned—although others give the app a full five-star rating and seem happy with how it worked.

As always, remember the dangers of using your phone while driving. This is specifically for emulating Android Auto on a screen other than your built-in head unit—the other functions on your phone should stay unused until you're safely parked up.

Setting up Headunit Reloaded Emulator

Once you've installed Headunit Reloaded Emulator from the Play Store, you need to approve all the permissions that allow it to work, including Bluetooth and location access. When you're in the app, you'll see your three mode choices: Phone Mode (for using it on the current handset), and Wi-Fi and USB (for connecting to another device).

Tap Phone Mode to get Android Auto on your handset's own screen. It might not look great at first due to the cramped display size, but if you turn your phone around to its landscape orientation it should fit nicely. Any taps on the screen register just as they would on Android Auto, and you can switch apps and change the layout via the icons down the side.

Android Auto running on a Pixel phone. Credit: Lifehacker

To quit the interface, you need to go back inside the app rather than exiting it completely: On most Android handsets, this is now a left-to-right swipe on the left edge of the screen. A row of options shows up, including options for exiting the mode and even running it in a picture-in-picture format on your screen.

Back on the main screen, you're able to access a wealth of options under Settings. These cover everything from pixel density and screen margins to key press configurations and audio routing—you can pipe the audio from apps through your car's speakers via Bluetooth if you want, even if the Android Auto interface is on your phone.

Connecting to another device

If you have a separate phone or tablet you want to get Android Auto running on, then you need to get Headunit Reloaded Emulator up on this specific device—the one acting as the head unit (control center) in your car. You can then connect your primary phone to it, using that phone's apps and data.

The USB option is easier, if you've got a cable to spare and are happy to keep both devices hooked up during the course of your drive. Connect the cables, then on the device running Headunit Reloaded Emulator, tap the USB option on the main screen and select your main phone when it appears. On your main phone, you may need to tap the USB notification and choose Transferring files / Android Auto as the connection mode before it works.

Connecting to a secondary device over USB. Credit: Lifehacker

There's a wifi option as well: You need Headunit Reloaded Emulator running on the device that's displaying Android Auto, and the companion Wi-Fi Launcher app on your primary phone (driving the maps, apps, and info on the Android Auto screen). On the former device, choose Wi-Fi as the connection method inside Headunit Reloaded Emulator, and make sure the latter device is set up to be discovered in Wi-Fi Launcher.

By default, both devices need to be on the same wifi (your car's built-in wifi for example). You can also use a direct wifi connection: select it under Wireless in Wi-Fi Launcher, and under Settings > Connectivity in Headunit Reloaded Emulator. One device will then drive Android Auto on the other—no connecting wires needed.

iOS 27 Comes With a macOS-Like Recovery Mode for iPhone

Your iPhone is a mini computer, for all intents and purposes, and yet, some essential iOS features still require a Mac or a PC. That includes system recovery: If your iPhone is facing software issues, you've traditionally needed a computer to restore it. Apple is changing that slowly: In iOS 26, the company rolled out a new Recovery Assistant, which lets you triage your iPhone directly within iOS, as if it were a Mac. However, that menu would only appear if your iPhone failed on its own, with no way for you to access it yourself. That changes with iOS 27. If you're running the beta, you can try out Recovery Assistant whenever you want, with a new menu to boot.

What is iOS 27's recovery mode?

If your iPhone is glitching out, freezing, or has other software problems, you can use iOS 27's recovery mode to identify and fix the problem. Apple Support can also use recovery mode to run diagnostics on your iPhone without connecting it to a computer. The new recovery mode has the following five options:

• Recovery Assistant: With this, iOS automatically identifies and tries to fix software issues on your iPhone.

• Software Update: This option uses a nearby iPhone or iPad to update your iOS device to the latest version. This could help if your device is having trouble booting into an older version of the operating system. Note that this feature isn't available on older devices. (I can't access it on my iPhone 14 Pro Max.)

• Diagnostics Mode: This option helps Apple employees diagnose problems and decide how to proceed with repair. It's also how Apple checks your iPhone for defects during the trade-in process. If you're planning to sell your iPhone, you may use this feature to identify issues with your device.

• Erase All Content and Settings: This option lets you format your iPhone and reset it to factory settings. Again, this option is helpful if your iPhone is unable to boot into iOS.

• Recovery Mode: This option lets you connect your iPhone to a computer and restore it to factory settings.

How to access recovery mode in iOS 27

Credit: Apple

It's quite easy to access recovery mode in iOS 27, but you should only do so as a last resort. Multiple options in recovery mode actively point you towards formatting your iPhone and losing all data. For most software-related issues, you should only use Recovery Assistant if other common troubleshooting methods fail. Before you start using recovery modes regularly, try restarting your device once, updating to the latest version of iOS, or reinstalling any problematic apps. Once you've tried the above steps, you can fire up recovery mode on your iPhone by doing the following:

1. Press Volume Up and release it.

2. Press Volume Down and release it.

3. Immediately after this, hold down the Side button (power button).

4. Keep holding the button even after the Apple logo appears. You'll see a message that reads, "Continue holding for recovery."

5. You can release the power button when you see "Loading recovery options…" on screen. A progress bar will appear under the Apple logo, and when it completes loading, your iPhone will load the recovery mode screen.

6. To exit recovery mode, hit the power button in the top-right corner of the screen, and tap Restart. This will reboot your iPhone and bring you back to its lock screen.

10 Privacy Hacks for Managing Browser Cookies Everyone Should Know

Do you "accept" or "reject" that cookie request? Browser cookies don’t just remember your login details: They can track your browsing history across websites, follow you around with specific ads, or even hijack your active browser session to log into your accounts without a password. On the other hand, if you don’t click accept when you see a cookie banner, that can affect your browsing experience—many websites need cookies to function normally.

Luckily, cookie management isn’t just a binary choice any more. You can choose which cookies to accept on a website, auto-delete cookies after a set amount of time, or even switch between browser profiles to control which cookies stay active during a session.

Switch on Device Bound Session Credentials in Chrome

Credit: Alphabet/Google

When an attacker steals your session cookies, they can bypass the requirement for passwords or multi-factor authentication and get into your logged-in accounts right away. Websites think it’s you accessing an account you already logged into, so they don’t ask for credentials again. 

DBSC (aka Device Bound Session Credentials) is a Chrome feature that restricts your session cookies so that they apply to your current physical device only. A hardware boundary is established, preventing hackers from replaying your session cookies from a different device. DBSC is turned on by default in Chrome, but you need to be using version 146 or above and enable TPM on Windows for it to work. 

Install the official Multi-Account Containers add-on for Firefox

Credit: Firefox

Blocking all third-party cookies outright often prevents any embedded content from loading, but if you don’t do it, cookies from different websites can stitch your complete browsing activity together for ad targeting. 

Total Cookie Protection is the default Firefox feature that creates a separate cookie jar for each domain, so third-party cookies stay enabled but can’t track you after you leave that website. This is great, except when you’re trying to stay logged into multiple accounts on the same domain, like several inboxes on Gmail. Firefox won’t create separate cookie jars for different accounts on the same domain, so third-party cookies can follow you from one account to another. 

That’s why you should install Multi-Account Containers. This official Firefox extension lets you separate cookies not just by domain name, but by creating different container tabs that each represent a distinct browsing activity like Personal, Work, or Shopping. Each container gets its own cookie storage that does not interfere with the others. This can work together with Total Cookie Protection for even more privacy benefits.

Learn about the different privacy options on Safari

Credit: Apple

ITP, ATFP, and AFP are three overlapping cookie management systems that work together to protect your browsing activity from trackers and cookies on Safari. You should know which does what so you can enable the functions that work best for you. 

• Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) is the default anti-tracking engine built into Safari since 2017. It causes script-set cookies to expire after seven days and purges all site-specific data after 30 days of no activity. 

• Advanced Tracking and Fingerprinting Protection (ATFP) is an optional feature that adds another layer of security protocols on top of ITP for domain blocking and link tracker removal. 

• Advanced Fingerprinting Protection (AFP) is a newer Safari feature that prevents websites from identifying your device using high-entropy device APIs that pull data like screen size, hardware specs, audio data, canvas rendering, etc. 

You can adjust your privacy settings on Safari by navigating to Settings > Apps > Safari > Advanced on your iPhone or Mac. 

Delete cookies automatically when tabs are closed

Credit: Cookie AutoDelete

Most people aren’t used to clearing their cookie storage manually, even though that’s something you should absolutely do. Luckily there are browser extensions that can automatically clear all cookies from a website the moment you close your browser tab, unless you’ve specifically whitelisted that website. 

Cookie AutoDelete on Firefox is the original extension that introduced this feature. But on Chrome, Opera, Edge, and other Chromium-based browsers, you’ll need a newer extension like Cookie Guardian. Safari does not have a similar extension but it sets cookies to delete automatically after seven days by default, so you don’t have to worry about it so much. 

Delete cookies individually to customize your site experience

Credit: Cookie-Editor

Sometimes you want to remove specific tracking cookies without wiping your whole cookie session with a website. Cookie-Editor, an open-source extension that’s available across all major browsers, lets you do exactly that. While it is primarily intended as a developer tool for troubleshooting web apps, you can also use it to manage your privacy while surfing the internet. 

That said, Cookie-Editor does not support rule-based automation and cookies must be deleted manually on every visit, so treat this more as a last-resort fix for persistent tracking cookies rather than something you’d use all the time. 

Save cookie profiles to avoid logging in and out every time

Credit: Cookie Editor

Did you know that you can save a snapshot of your browser’s full set of active cookies, delete them, then restore them at any point to the last snapshot using specific extensions? Instead of manually logging back into accounts every time you clear your cookie storage, you can create a cookie profile to instantly snap back to the logged-in state after you delete your browsing activity. 

Cookie Editor on Chromium-based browsers (not to be confused with the open-source Cookie-Editor), lets you create cookie snapshots for each site and restore them with a single click. On Firefox, you can get the same functionality out of Cookie Quick Manager. Safari does not have any extensions that support cookie profiles just yet, but you can export and import cookies in JSON, which gets you close enough. 

Create temporary cookie permissions for each site

Credit: Alphabet/Google

Instead of allowing third-party cookies on every site, you can create temporary exceptions on a per-site basis for websites that need to have cookies enabled. 

You can do this in Chrome by clicking on the eye-shaped icon next to the address bar, then switching “Third-party cookies blocked” to “Third-party cookies allowed.” This grants that website an exception that lasts for 90 days by default, unless you choose to disable it manually. 

On Firefox, you can click the shield icon on the address bar and toggle off Enhanced Tracking Protection. Your page will now reload with trackers and cookies enabled. It won’t use tracking protection again until you manually enable it. If you visit a website occasionally and need complete functionality when you do, but don’t trust the site to have blanket cookie exceptions the year round, this could be a nice middle ground. 

Regularly revoke active sessions on your device

Credit: Alphabet/Google

Passkeys protect your login credentials, but not the logged-in accounts on your web browser. If you’ve already signed into an app or website from your browser, it generates session cookies that stay active until the moment you close your browser. If an attacker gains access to those session cookies through malware or phishing, they can freely access your accounts as long as your current browser session remains active. 

You can revoke your session cookies once you’re done with an app or website by simply logging out of the account from that device. But if you want to log out of all sessions from other devices too, Google, Microsoft, Meta, and all other major online platforms let you revoke active sessions tied to your account either per device or all at once. 

This even works on third-party apps or websites that use the single sign-on feature to let you sign in with your Google or Microsoft account without setting a username and password.

Implement network-level blocking with DNS filters

Credit: Pi-hole

Not all browsers support cookie management extensions on every device. If you’d like to block tracker cookies before they can even reach your browser, you can use network-level tools that block cookie requests directly from your router. Pi-hole is a self-hosted application that runs on a remote server or virtual machine. Once installed, you can configure any router to route all internet traffic through your Pi-hole server by changing some DNS settings. 

This will block any known advertisement or tracking domains from sending cookie requests to your connected devices, effectively stopping tracking cookies from even being generated. If self-hosting Pi-hole feels intimidating, you can also try the cloud-based alternative NextDNS. 

Back up your cookies before performing cleanup operations

Credit: EditThisCookie

Once you click “Clear browsing data,” your browser permanently deletes all your cookies from the device storage and there’s no way to retrieve them. If you’d rather avoid re-authenticating logins on certain websites every time, you can back up your cookie storage before performing a cleanup by exporting it as a CSV file or JSON. You can use the Cookie-Editor extension mentioned earlier to export your cookie storage on Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari, and other popular web browsers. Other extensions like EditThisCookie and Cookies.txt offer the same feature.