What are Cookies?

Cookies are a tool used by sites to set small pieces of data on the browser. Some features that often rely on cookies include:

  • Saving login data after a user logs in to a site
  • Storing what items a user has added to their shopping cart
  • Tracking user analytics and behavior

If your site relies on setting cookies, you may notice some issues with how your site behaves when you load it in the Makeswift Visual Builder. This is because your site is embedded inside an <iframe> when it loads in our builder. When an embedded site (in this case, your site) is attempting to set a cookie, that cookie is considered by the browser as a third-party cookie. Modern web browsers have privacy restrictions on how third-party cookies are set. As a result, you may see issues related to cookies inside the builder, but not in your live page.

Browser Settings

If cookie related issues are impacting your editing experience, there’s some ways you can modify your browser settings to allow third-party cookies to be set: We’ll go over how for the major browsers:

Chrome / Brave / Arc

Chrome (and other Chromium based browsers, like Brave and Arc) allow you to control whether specific sites can set third-party cookies. With their plan to soon disable all third-party cookies, it may be helpful to allow your site to set third-party cookies:

  1. In the URL bar, go to chrome://settings/cookies
  2. In the Site allowed to use third party cookies section, click the Add button.
  3. A text input will appear that allows you to add a domain. Add your site’s domain. For example, if your host is on example.com, enter example.com in the text input.
    • You can also match your other subdomains, like custom.example.com, by using a matcher: [*.]example.com.

For more information on modifying Chrome’s cookie permissions for you site, see this article.

Even with these browser settings, Chrome will still not allow sites to set third-party cookies unless the cookie has specific attributes. For your site, this means that your developer will have to make some changes to how cookies are set. See the Developer Settings section for more details.

Firefox

Since 2021, Firefox automatically partitions third-party cookies, which means that any cookies your site sets while you’re using the Makeswift Visual Builder will only be saved within the builder. Because of this, your site should behave as expected within Makeswift, without any action needed on your part.

If you’re still encountering issues, you can modify your browser settings:

  1. Go to Preferences > Privacy & Security
  2. Under the Cookies and Site Data section, click Manage Exceptions
  3. In the dialog that appears, enter your site’s domain name and click Allow.

For more information on modifying Firefox’s cookie permissions for you site, see this article.

Safari

To disable Safari’s third-party cookie restrictions:

  1. Go to Settings > Privacy
  2. Uncheck the box for Website tracking: Prevent cross-site tracking.

Disabling this setting will allow all website to set third-party cookies, not just your site within Makeswift. If you have privacy concerns, feel free to turn on the protections again when you’re done editing your site in Makeswift.

Developer Settings

If none of the above settings worked, you may need your developer to modify how cookies are set. Some browsers require that your site uses certain values when setting a cookie so that it can be properly set in a third-party context. See this article for more details.