Cocoa Cookies is a cookie previewer and manager.
The application works with the browsers that are based on WebKit. This means that the program can manage either cookies that are stored after visiting a Website with the built in Safari, or with
Shiira for example.
It also includes support for Dashboard and NetNewsWire because all of these applications use the same cookie repository. It can work with other applications that are not specified by the producer, such as
SunriseBrowser. Cocoa Cookies doesn't work with all the WebKit browsers. For example it doesn't work with
OmniWeb which uses its own repository for the cookies.
The interface of Cocoa Cookies is very simple. The cookies are automatically grouped by domain. You can see the number of cookies for each domain, and you can also see their path, expiring date, its content, or whether the cookie is secured or not.
The cleanup can be made in the following ways: by selecting which cookies you would like to delete: in this case you can use the 'Remove' button. If you would like to do a mass delete, then you can pick which cookies the program shouldn't delete, and use the 'Remove All' button.
Cocoa Cookies also provides you a 'search-as-you-type' engine in order to find certain cookies that contain the search query. This functionality is very useful if you have hundreds of cookies and you wouldn't like to erase all of them.
Pluses: it can work with cookies from all WebKit browsers, it provides a clean and well designed interface, is very fast.
Drawbacks / flaws: it doesn't have support for all the browsers from the Mac OS X platform. For example, if you use
Opera or
Firefox, then Cocoa Cookies won't see the cookies that are stored by these browsers.
In conclusion: it is a pretty good cookie manager. It is also a pretty usable application because it integrates the search engine and the mass deletion functionality.
version reviewed: 0.9
Cocoa Cookies Publisher's Description
Cocoa Cookies is a very simple Cocoa app that helps you to search for and delete HTTP cookies stored in the shared Cocoa cookies storage. Including Undo and Redo capabilities! "What is the 'shared Cocoa cookies repository'?" I hear you asking... Well... it's a Cocoa API for storing cookies (NSHTTPCookieStorage class to be exact... but that's not important). A few popular Cocoa apps use it to store their cookies in a common, shared repository:
Safari
Dashboard
NetNewsWire
Shiira
Those are the ones I know of... there may be more.
The easiest way to describe Cocoa Cookies is to tell you why I personally needed it. At work, I'm developing a web application for which I am constantly needing to delete specific cookies. I like to test and develop my web app primarily using Safari (occasionally stopping to test in EOMB [Every Other Modern Broswer], of course). Safari is also my preferred browser for personal use, so the number of cookies stored in my version of Safari at any one time is quite large. So when I decide I need to delete a specific cookie for my web app, I have to open Safari preferences, click the 'Security' toolbar icon, click 'Show Cookies' and then visually search thru the list of hundreds of cookies to find the ones that match the domain for my web app ('localhost.local' in this case). That is a pain in the ass. Safari's cookie-browsing UI does not currently include any way to search the stored cookies.
Cocoa Cookies allows you to view the cookies that Safari, or any other Cocoa app, has stored in the share cookie storage. More importantly, Cocoa Cookies contains a search field that provides live 'search-as-you-type' searching on the domains (only the domains) of the cookies stored. Thus, making it much easier to find and delete the specific cookies you are looking for.
Here's an extra bonus... NetNewsWire -- the most popular RSS reader on any platform, not only OS X -- is also a web browser that stores cookies in the shared Cocoa cookie storage. Additionally, NetNewsWire does not provide a UI for managing the cookies you amass while browsing. Use Cocoa Cookies to manage your NetNewsWire cookies!
It's simple, and it needs a little work... but I hope you like it. System Requirements Mac OS X 10.4 or later.
