How to clear cache on your Mac
Caches help apps load faster, but over time they pile up — eating gigabytes of disk space and sometimes causing sluggish behavior. Here's how to clear browser, app, and system caches on macOS.
Clear browser cache
Browsers store cached images, scripts, and pages to speed up repeat visits. Clearing the cache can fix rendering issues and free up significant space.
Safari
- Open Safari and click
Safari → Settings(or press ⌘ ,). - Go to the Privacy tab.
- Click Manage Website Data.
- Click Remove All to clear all cached data, or select individual sites.
Chrome
- Open Chrome and navigate to
chrome://settings/clearBrowserData(or press ⌘ Shift Delete). - Select Cached images and files.
- Set the time range to All time.
- Click Clear data.
Firefox
- Open Firefox and go to
Settings → Privacy & Security. - Scroll to Cookies and Site Data.
- Click Clear Data, check Cached Web Content, and confirm.
Clear app caches
Every app on your Mac can store cached data in ~/Library/Caches/. Over months of use, these folders can grow to several gigabytes each.
- Open Finder.
- Press ⌘ Shift G to open the "Go to Folder" dialog.
- Type
~/Library/Caches/and press Enter. - Review the folders inside and delete ones for apps you no longer need. Move them to Trash first so you can restore if needed.
Common large cache folders you'll find:
Offline music and album art cache
Browser cache, profile data
Xcode build caches and logs
Container images and layer cache
Safe to delete? Yes — app caches are rebuilt automatically the next time you open the app. Deleting them won't break anything, but the app may take slightly longer to launch the first time.
Clear system and DNS cache
macOS maintains its own caches for DNS lookups, fonts, and the kernel. Clearing these can fix networking issues and stale lookups.
DNS cache
If websites aren't loading or you recently changed DNS settings, flush the DNS cache:
sudo dscacheutil -flushcache
sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder
Enter your admin password when prompted. This takes effect immediately — no restart required.
Font cache
If fonts appear corrupted or missing, clear the font cache and restart:
sudo atsutil databases -remove
Kernel cache
On Apple Silicon Macs, the kernel cache is managed automatically by macOS and cannot be manually cleared. On older Intel Macs, a simple restart rebuilds the kernel cache. In general, you should not need to touch this.
Automated cleanup with Zapper
Manually digging through ~/Library/Caches works, but it's tedious — especially when caches are spread across 11 different Library subdirectories. Zapper scans all of them in parallel and uses word-boundary matching to find every cache folder belonging to a specific app.
Drop any app onto Zapper, review the files it finds (including caches, preferences, containers, logs, and saved state), and zap them to Trash — reversible with ⌘Z. One-time $9.99 for up to 3 Macs, no subscription.