How to Clear Your Cache on Your Computer (Windows & Mac)

Your computer stores temporary files — called cache — to help apps and websites load faster. Over time, this buildup can slow things down, cause display glitches, or surface outdated data. Clearing your cache is one of the most straightforward maintenance steps you can take, but where you clear it depends on what's causing the problem.

What Is a Cache, and Why Does It Build Up?

A cache is a collection of temporary files your system saves so it doesn't have to re-fetch or re-process the same data repeatedly. Your browser caches images and scripts. Windows caches system files and app data. Your DNS resolver caches website addresses. Even thumbnails in File Explorer get cached.

This is useful by design — cached data makes repeated tasks faster. The problem is that caches aren't always cleaned up automatically, and stale or corrupted cache files can cause:

• Websites loading old versions of pages 🖥️
• Apps behaving unexpectedly or crashing
• Sluggish performance as storage fills up
• Login or session errors on websites

Understanding which cache is causing your issue determines where you need to clean.

Browser Cache: The Most Common Culprit

If you're seeing outdated content on websites, login loops, or slow page loads, your browser cache is the first place to look.

How to Clear Browser Cache on Windows or Mac

Most major browsers follow the same basic pattern:

In each browser, look for options to clear cached images and files — this is the core cache. You'll also see options for cookies, browsing history, and saved passwords, but those are separate and clearing them has different consequences (like logging you out of sites).

Time range matters. Most browsers let you clear cache for the last hour, last 24 hours, last week, or all time. If you're troubleshooting a specific site, starting with "last 7 days" is often enough.

Windows System Cache

Windows maintains several layers of cache beyond your browser. These accumulate in different locations and are cleared through different tools.

Temporary Files

Windows stores temporary files in %temp% — you can paste that directly into the address bar of File Explorer or the Run dialog (Win+R). Files in this folder are safe to delete, though occasionally a file in use will be skipped.

The more structured approach is using Disk Cleanup:

1. Search for "Disk Cleanup" in the Start menu
2. Select your system drive (usually C:)
3. Check items like Temporary Files, Temporary Internet Files, and Thumbnails
4. Click OK

Windows 10 and 11 also offer Storage Sense (Settings > System > Storage), which can be configured to delete temporary files automatically on a schedule.

DNS Cache

Your computer stores a local record of domain-to-IP lookups to speed up web browsing. A corrupted DNS cache can prevent websites from loading even when your internet connection is fine.

To flush it on Windows, open Command Prompt as Administrator and run:

ipconfig /flushdns 

On a Mac, the command varies slightly depending on your macOS version, but the current standard is:

sudo dscacheutil -flushcache; sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder 

You won't see a dramatic change — the effect is that your computer will re-fetch fresh DNS records on the next lookup.

Thumbnail Cache

File Explorer generates thumbnail previews of images and videos and stores them in a hidden cache. If thumbnails appear blank or incorrect, clearing this cache forces Windows to rebuild it.

Disk Cleanup includes a Thumbnails checkbox — this is the simplest method. After clearing, thumbnails regenerate automatically as you browse folders.

Mac System Cache

On macOS, cache files live primarily in ~/Library/Caches/ — each app gets its own subfolder. 🍎

To access it:

1. Open Finder
2. Hold Option and click Go in the menu bar
3. Select Library
4. Open the Caches folder

You can delete the contents of individual app folders here, but leave the folders themselves intact. Deleting an entire app's cache folder can sometimes cause it to misbehave on next launch until it rebuilds.

For system-level cache, macOS handles more automatically than Windows does, but apps like Safari, Xcode, and system processes can generate substantial cache over time.

What Changes Based on Your Setup

Clearing cache isn't universally the same experience, and a few variables shift what's relevant for your situation:

Operating system version — Windows 11 surfaces storage management tools more prominently than older versions. macOS Ventura and later handle some cache cleanup differently than Monterey.

How you use your browser — Power users with dozens of tabs and heavy web app use accumulate browser cache faster than casual browsers. The benefit of clearing is proportionally larger.

Available storage — On a machine with a small SSD nearly full, cache buildup has a more immediate performance impact than on a system with 500GB free.

What you're troubleshooting — If you're fixing a specific problem (broken website, app error, slow thumbnails), targeted cache clearing is more useful than wiping everything. If you're doing general maintenance, a broader sweep makes more sense.

Third-party apps — Some applications (video editors, IDEs, creative tools) maintain their own independent caches that don't appear in standard system tools and have to be cleared from within the app itself.

How aggressively you clear cache, and which caches you prioritize, depends on the specifics of what you're running and what you're trying to fix.