localStorage cannot be removed in Chrome

Question

I have extremely weird behaviour in Chrome: Version 61.0.3163.79 (Official Build) (64-bit).

I keep a token in localStorage and I cannot remove it permanently. Now matter whether I do it programmatically by localStorage.removeItem('token') or by Chrome tools in the application tab, this token keeps coming back. After removing the token, when I refresh the page, token is not there, but once I close this tab and open a new one for my application, this token is resurrected!

Also, when I have multiple tabs opened, when I refresh pages, some tabs see this token, some not, and it shouldn't be like this as localStorage should be global for all tabs.

I have no idea what this is, a new Chrome bug?

Answer 1

I noticed the same behavior and verified that it did not work this way in Chrome version 60.

It looks like a bug in Chrome: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=765524

As a workaround, I changed

localStorage.removeItem('token')

to

localStorage.setItem('token', '')

and that seems to give me the expected behavior (i.e. logout works).

Answer 2

In 2022 it seems still be the case, at least I've failed to remove an item with the mouse right click → context menu → delete

But I've managed to do it via a double click on the key value, which puts you sort of into an edit mode, so that one can just then press Backspace and the key is removed.