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Version: 1.0.1

Freezing Cookies

Freeze pins a cookie's value in place. A background enforcer watches the cookie and instantly reverts any change — whether the page's JavaScript, a server Set-Cookie, or an outright deletion — back to the value you froze. The cookie stays exactly as you left it until you unfreeze it.

This replaces hand-editing a cookie over and over when something keeps overwriting it.

When to Freeze​

  • Hold a session that a script or server keeps rotating out from under you.
  • Lock a feature flag or experiment variant while you test the UI.
  • Keep a hardened value (correct SameSite, trimmed size) in place while you verify a fix from the Report.
  • Reproduce a bug that only appears with one specific cookie value.
  1. Open the cookie in the Cookies view (edit the value first if you want to freeze something other than the current value).
  2. Choose Freeze. The cookie is marked as frozen.
  3. From now on, any change to that cookie is reverted to the frozen value automatically.

You can watch the enforcer work in the Activity view: an external write appears, immediately followed by the revert.

Managing Freezes — the Frozen View​

The Frozen view lists every freeze across sites and cookie stores:

  • Search and sort your freezes.
  • See each frozen cookie's value and where it applies.
  • Unfreeze with one click when you're done.

Because a frozen value has to be restorable, Cookie Lens stores it in local extension storage — on your device only. See the Privacy Policy.

Freeze vs Edit vs Profiles​

  • Edit changes a cookie once; the next server write can overwrite it.
  • Freeze keeps a single cookie pinned against all changes until you unfreeze.
  • Profiles swap a whole set of cookies at once for scenario testing — see Profiles.

Notes​

  • Freezing a signed cookie to an edited value will still fail server validation — that's expected; the enforcer keeps your value, but the server may reject it.
  • Freezes tied to a closed incognito session are purged automatically.
  • Unfreeze when you're finished so later debugging isn't affected by a value that's being held in place.

See Also​