How to clear your phone’s cache to save space and improve performance

It’s inevitable: Our phones start to slow down and that precious memory space begins to fill up — causing a whole host of annoying problems that seem to get worse over time.

So how can you improve the performance of your smartphone and free up space for more photos, videos and text messages? 

Clearing out your cache. In this week’s quick tip, we’ll show you how to clear your cache to save space and improve your smartphone’s performance.

So what is cache?

Essentially, cache is the data stored by your phone’s browser or apps after opening a webpage or program for the first time to speed up loading times the next time you access it. While this can help load times in the short term, this digital clutter can eventually use up a lot of space on your phone and slow it down in the long run. That’s why we recommend clearing out your cache once a month.

Clear cache on an iPhone

As we mentioned above, there are two types of cache stored on your device: app and browser cache. Here’s how to clear both:

Clear cache on Safari

Safari is the default browser on iPhones. If you use a different browser, click these links for Chrome or Firefox to learn how to clear the cache from those apps.

• Go to Settings > Safari > Tap Clear History and Website Data, then confirm.

Clear iPhone app cache

• Go to Settings > General > select iPhone Storage then let the page load.
• You will see a list of apps sorted by which ones are using up the most space.
• Click on an app, then tap “Offload App”
• Additionally, you can enable “Offload Unused Apps” to automatically save space from apps you haven’t used recently

Clear cache on Android

Clear cache on Chrome

• Open the Chrome app > tap three dots for More > History > Clear browsing data and follow the instructions to clear out cookies, site data, cached images and files.

Clear Android app cache

• Open Settings > Storage > Other apps.
• Tap the three dots in the top right and choose “Sort by size”
• Choose an app and tap it, then tap Clear cache.