Sick of running out of room on your phone? How about sluggish performance? Stored data builds up and bloats your Android device, but clearing your app cache can reverse the curse. Learn how to clear your Android cache to boost speed and free up space. Then, optimize your phone even more with a free cleanup app with View Cache Files Android.
Cached data helps apps load faster by keeping temporary files such as thumbnails, scripts, and video snippets on your phone instead of loading them from the web each time. But cached data can quickly fill up your phone’s storage. When you clear your cache, you wipe all multimedia and non-essential data from the targeted application.
Some apps monitor cached data themselves. Spotify, for example, clears the quick-loading cache for albums constantly, helping them load more quickly (any data related to core app functions will remain, such as albums you’ve downloaded).
In other apps, functions such as your game progress or bookmarks are safe from cache-clearing as well. But poorly designed apps stuff Android’s cached data partition full of junk. To optimize your phone, start by clearing the cache on Android, then move on to our other tips to tidy up your Android phone or tablet with View Cache Files Android.
While caches help apps load more quickly, cookies help store user preferences, auto-fill form data, and log your browsing history. And that data can pile up as well, so it’s good device hygiene to clear your cookies on Android periodically, too.
Every app creates cached data, and we’ll show you how to clear your cache on Android browsers and apps in a few easy steps.
How to clear browser cache on Android
Here’s how to clear the browser cache on Android (for Chrome):
Open Chrome.
At the top-right, tap on the three vertical dots to open the Chrome options menu.
Tap History.
Tap Clear browsing data…
Check “Cached images and files.”
Next to “Time range,” choose a time range. Selecting All time will delete your entire Chrome cache.
Tap Clear data.
That’s how you can improve mobile Chrome performance by clearing cached data on Android. You can also clear your browser history by checking the Browsing history box in Step 5. If you don’t use Chrome, check out how to clear your browser history in other browsers. Or, if you want to clear your cache on Mac, we have you covered there too.
If you don’t want to be on cleanup duty all the time, a browser cleaner tool can clear your cache and cookies automatically with View Cache Files Android.
How to clear app cache on Android
Clearing your cache can reclaim precious storage space on your phone and resolve technical issues such as app slowdowns. We’ll show you what clearing your cache does for your phone.
Here’s how to clear your app cache on Android:
Open Settings and tap Storage.
Choose if you want to clear the cache on Photo & video apps, games, or another category, or tap Other apps to get an overview of all your apps.
Tap the three dots in the right corner and choose Sort by size to see which of your apps are taking up the most storage space.
Now select an app and tap Clear cache.
That’s one way to clear your app cache on Android. You can delete app data for any Android app with the same steps. Clear the app cache files of any app you think is causing performance issues, or delete app data for any apps you want to open with a clean slate. You’ll get some storage space back, but nothing you’ve downloaded will be deleted. Depending on the app, user data such as your preferences or search history may be reset.
If your phone is still sluggish after clearing a fishy app’s cache, you might have what is known as bloatware. Bloatware can float onto your phone sources such as from shady ads, so get one of the best ad blockers for Android to stay one step ahead.
It’s hard to keep track of all the digital trash that mobile apps leave behind. It’s a lot faster to use a cleanup app instead of going through all your apps one by one. With handy tools to clean up and optimize your phone, a free tuneup app like Avast Cleanup for Android will tidy up all the digital leftovers with just a few taps.
