How to Clear the Cache on a Mac (Safari, Chrome, Apps, and DNS) — and When Not To

“Clear your cache” is the most-repeated Mac advice on the internet, and most of the articles pushing it never tell you the two things that actually matter: which cache (there are at least four different ones), and whether clearing it will fix your problem at all. This guide walks through every cache on a Mac — Safari, Chrome, Firefox, app caches, and DNS — with the exact clicks, plus an honest section on when cache-clearing is the wrong fix entirely.

First: what a cache is, and when clearing it actually helps

A cache is a scratch pile of files your Mac keeps so it doesn't have to re-download or re-compute things. Browsers cache images and scripts so pages load faster; apps cache thumbnails and previews; macOS caches DNS lookups so websites resolve instantly.

Clearing a cache helps in exactly three situations:

• A website is misbehaving — showing an old version, a broken layout, or a login loop. Clearing that browser's cache (or just that site's data) usually fixes it.
• One app is glitching — wrong thumbnails, stale previews, sync weirdness. Clearing that app's cache forces a rebuild.
• Your drive is nearly full and caches are part of a bloated “System Data” blob. Worth doing, but it's one fix among several — our storage-full guide ranks them by payoff.

What cache-clearing does not do: make a slow Mac meaningfully faster. If the whole machine beachballs, that's a different diagnosis — start with MacBook running slow? Every fix in order.

Clear the Safari cache

1. Open Safari → Safari menu → Settings (or Preferences on older macOS) → Advanced tab.
2. Check “Show features for web developers” (older macOS: “Show Develop menu in menu bar”).
3. A Develop menu appears in the menu bar. Click it → Empty Caches. Done — no restart needed.

To nuke one problem site instead of everything: Settings → Privacy → Manage Website Data, search the site, Remove. This clears its cookies too, so you'll be logged out of that site — and only that site.

Clear the Chrome cache

1. Chrome → three-dot menu → Delete Browsing Data (or press Cmd+Shift+Delete).
2. Time range: All time.
3. Check “Cached images and files” only. Leave “Cookies and other site data” unchecked unless you want to be signed out of everything.
4. Click Delete data.

Clear the Firefox cache

1. Firefox → Settings → Privacy & Security.
2. Scroll to Cookies and Site Data → Clear Data.
3. Check “Temporary cached files and pages” only, then Clear.

App and user caches (~/Library/Caches) — the careful way

Every app keeps its own cache folder here. Safe procedure:

1. Quit the app that's misbehaving.
2. In Finder: Go menu → Go to Folder (Cmd+Shift+G), type ~/Library/Caches and hit Return.
3. Open the folder named after the problem app (e.g. com.spotify.client), select its contents, and move them to Trash. Delete the contents, not the folder itself.
4. Relaunch the app. It rebuilds a fresh cache automatically.

Two rules keep this safe: never empty all of ~/Library/Caches blindly (apps re-download gigabytes and some behave badly until rebuilt), and stay out of /System/Library/Caches — macOS manages system caches itself, and on modern versions that volume is sealed read-only anyway.

Flush the DNS cache

Only needed when websites won't load by name after a DNS change, or a site resolves to the wrong place. Open Terminal (Applications → Utilities) and paste:

sudo dscacheutil -flushcache; sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

Enter your password (it types invisibly), press Return. No output means it worked.

Skip the “Mac cleaner” apps

Everything above took you five minutes and cost nothing. The cleaner apps that advertise against searches like this one charge $30–40 a year to do the same deletions — and several of the heavily-promoted ones are flagged as adware by the malware scanners we actually trust. macOS already auto-manages caches, purges Time Machine local snapshots as the drive fills, and clears temp files on restart. A restart plus the steps above beats any cleaner app.

The honest part: when clearing cache is the wrong fix

If you're clearing caches every week to claw back disk space, the drive is too small — that's a hardware ceiling, not a housekeeping failure, and the storage-full guide covers the upgrade math. If you're clearing caches hoping an old Mac stops beachballing, caches were never the bottleneck — the slow-Mac guide walks the real fix order, and its honest section covers when a Mac is slow by age, not by software. When it's the latter, get a trade-in number for your current Mac before you spend anything on it.

All guides →

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it safe to clear the cache on a Mac?

Yes — browser caches, per-app caches in ~/Library/Caches, and the DNS cache are all safe to clear; they rebuild automatically. The unsafe move is deleting inside /System/Library/Caches or emptying every app's cache at once for no reason. Clear the cache that maps to your actual problem.

Does clearing the cache speed up a Mac?

Barely, and only in narrow cases (one bloated app, or a nearly-full drive regaining breathing room). A slow Mac is almost always RAM pressure, a spinning hard drive, or age — not caches.

Will clearing the cache delete my passwords or bookmarks?

No. Cache is separate from passwords, bookmarks, and history. The exception: clearing cookies (a separate checkbox in every browser) signs you out of websites. Clear “cached images and files” only and your logins survive.

How often should I clear my cache?

Never, on a schedule. Caches exist to make things faster; clearing them routinely makes everything slower until they rebuild. Clear a specific cache when a specific thing misbehaves.

What is taking up all my storage if not cache?

Usually old iPhone backups, video files, Downloads cruft, and Time Machine local snapshots — caches are a minority of “System Data.” The storage-full guide shows where the space actually went.