To keep your computer’s connection fast and surfing without slowing down, you need to clear your PC’s cache: here’s when and how to do this practice.
Clearing your PC’s cache is one of the most frequent recommendations you’ll hear from those more tech-savvy than you. On the other hand, to keep your computer and especially your web browsing faster, it is a practice that should be done periodically. A sort of golden rule for those who always demand high performance from their device.
Before figuring out what to do to clear the cache on Windows 10, but also on previous versions of Microsoft’s home operating system, it’s good to clarify that a cache exists in a variety of places and on all types of devices. While each cache contains different information, they are, however, all used for the same purpose. In this guide, we’ll focus only on clearing the cache on PCs, leaving out smartphones, tablets and Macs.
What is cache
A cache can be defined as an online repository of temporary files that are mostly used to speed up users’ browsing experience. In more practical terms, its existence speeds up the display of screens on a computer. Without the cache, in short, modern machines wouldn’t run as fast as they actually do. However, it can happen that the presence of the cache is not always an advantage: on some occasions, it can take up a lot of space on the internal storage disk, collect malware or return corrupted and damaged files. Eliminating the so-called “temporary files” from your computer then serves to free up disk space and increase our PC’s performance by decreasing the time it takes to search for files, defragmentation and antivirus scanning. In general, remember that there are three major categories of temporary files, namely Internet temporary files, Windows temporary files and program temporary files.
When and how to clear the cache on your PC
Just because it is an archive of files that are very useful to speed up the loading time of web pages or that of applications and software of various kinds, it is not always advantageous to go and clear the cache and its temporary files, which can still occupy many precious gigabytes of space. You should only resort to clearing the cache when it gets corrupted, perhaps due to a virus downloaded in the browser cache. Not only that, the files present here might be completely obsolete if the cache does not renew itself automatically, leading to errors on the pages we are trying to view.
That said, it is equally obvious that when the PC is not working properly, and more so when surfing the web, the first thing to do is to clear the cache where a corrupted file might be stored. Most modern web browsers fortunately allow you to clear the cache by following a series of steps from “Settings”, or by using the keyboard shortcut “CTRL + Shift + Delete”. As we already mentioned, clearing should be done only when necessary, for example in case of 404 errors or 502 errors, which usually indicate that the cache is damaged, due to the presence of malware, or trivially to free up space on the computer’s hard drive.
Deleting Google Chrome cache
To delete the cache on Google Chrome you can first of all take advantage of the aforementioned keyboard shortcut “CTRL + Shift + Delete” at least for Windows PCs, while you will have to use the “CMD + Shift + Delete” commands on Mac. Alternatively, you can happen directly to the “Settings”, found on the top right side of the screen and represented by three vertical dots. From here, access the “History” and select the “Delete browsing data” item. Remember to check “Cached Files and Images” and then click “Clear Data”.
Clearing Cache on Safari and Firefox
As with Chrome, Firefox users also need to access “History” to clear the browser’s cache. It can be done with the commands “Ctrl + Shift + Delete” for Windows or “CMD + Shift + Delete” for Mac, selecting the “All” item in the range to clear the options. Also on the Mozilla browser there is then access via the menu, recognizable by the icon with three horizontal lines in the top right corner, where we’ll have to select “Options”, “Library”, then “History”, and finally “Clear recent history”, checking the box” Cache”. In the Safari browser on Mac, the procedure is done through the Development menu. Select “Development” in Safari’s menu bar, then choose “Clear Cache.” If you prefer quick commands, type “CMD + Shift + Delete” on the keyboard.
Free disk space and restore points
Not everyone knows this, but another viable option to clean up our PC is to use the built-in Disk Cleanup application on Windows itself. Once you run the program, you’ll have the possibility of permanently eliminating a large amount of temporary files that are practically useless. As a last resort, you could then opt to eliminate the old restore points on your hard disk. This feature is also found in the “Disk Cleanup” section under “More Options”.