Emptying the cache frees the memory of the web browser data stored on the phone to avoid downloading them with each new visit, speeding up navigation. To visit a website, your smartphone must download basic information such as photos, banners, and other data locally. To speed up this process, most browsers store some of this Data in a cache (a portion of the storage space of the device that browses the Internet) so that it is easier to retrieve it on the next visit and, therefore, to make it more fluid—browsing experience.
Over time, the cached data accumulates and can slow down the loading of sites and apps, making processes cumbersome. That’s why clearing your iPhone cache can help – reset your browser, free up storage space, and speed up browsing. The only drawback is that this operation will disconnect us from the sites we are currently connected to. But in the end, it would only cost us once or twice a month.
How To Clear iPhone Cache: App
Let’s get straight to the point and see how to clear the iPhone cache by acting on the individual apps installed on the device. Know that each app takes on a different behavior for managing cache files, so how you can intervene on each of them also changes. Here is all explained in detail.
Automatic Cache Clearing Function
Some iPhone applications (alas, very few!) Include an automatic cache-clearing function that can be conveniently activated from the iOS settings. Going to the iPhone Settings app (the gear icon located on the Home screen), scrolling down, and selecting an app icon from those installed on your “iPhone by,” a screen will open where you may see the Clean on Startup toggle. If activated, the lever in question causes all the selected app’s cache data to be deleted automatically at each start. Convenient, right?
Also Read: APPLE HAS FIXED THE IPHONE 14 PRO CAMERA PROBLEM
Manual Deletion Of Data
Many apps do not provide an automatic cache-clearing function. Fortunately, they allow you to act on their data, thus allowing the user to delete them freely if they take up too much space on the iPhone memory. Among the applications of this type, there are certainly Safari and other browsers to browse the Internet, which allows you to delete the cache and other data stored within them. On the other hand, I want to focus on another top-rated app that allows you to delete your Data quickly: I am referring to WhatsApp, which among shared voice, video, and photos, is often responsible for space problems on many smartphones. You can’t talk about cache files in this case, but I think you’re interested in the subject anyway.
Start the application on your iPhone to manage the data in WhatsApp, select the Settings tab (bottom right), and go to Data and storage usage> Storage usage. You will then be shown the list of chats that take up the most space on the iPhone. Select, therefore, the conversation on which you want to act, press on the Manage item (at the bottom of the screen that opens), and check the boxes relating to the elements of the conversation you want to delete ( photos, GIFs, videos and voice messages are those which generally take up more space) and press on the item Empty Twice in a row to confirm the deletion of the selected data.
If you do not want to delete all the photos and videos present in a particular conversation, but only some of these, you can act on the individual contents by proceeding in this other way: select the WhatsApp Chat tab, tap on the conversation you want to intervene on, press on the chat title (at the top), go to Media, links, and documents, select the media tab, press on the Select item located at the top right, check the thumbnails of photos and videos to be deleted, tap on the basket (bottom right) and confirm. For the rest, alas, I cannot go into more detail, as each app provides settings structured differently to allow the deletion of the data.
The only thing I can suggest you do is to go to the Settings> General> iPhone Space menu of iOS and see which apps take up more space on the phone’s memory: focus in particular on the space occupied by documents and data (you can check this information by pressing on the name of each app) and act on the most “bulky” applications. Generally, you can find the data-clearing settings (if any) in the Settings menu of each app. Perhaps, to dispel any doubts about the exact procedure to follow, you can do a Google search using terms such as “clear cache [app name] iPhone.”
Reinstalling Apps
I’m sorry to tell you, but the only solution to clear the cache in apps that don’t have the automatic cache-clearing feature or options for manually clearing the data hosted within them is to uninstall and reinstall them. For example, suppose you want to know how to clear the Instagram cache on the iPhone since the app of the well-known photographic social network (at least at the time of writing) does not provide either the automatic cache clearing function or options to clear the data hosted inside it manually. In that case, I’m sorry to tell you that you can only uninstall and reinstall it.
I think you already know how to proceed with both things. In any case, a “refresher” never hurts: to uninstall an app from the iPhone, perform a long tap on the same icon on the Home screen, select the Delete app item from the menu that opens and confirm; to reinstall it, instead, you have to look for it in the App Store and press the cloud icon placed in its correspondence. Before proceeding to delete an app, as doing so will lose all the data inside it, ensure that the most important files are already saved on the cloud or your computer.
How To Clear iPhone Cache: Safari
As mentioned above, browsers are among the few applications allowing the user to manage the cache efficiently. In the case of Safari (iPhone’s default browser), for example, you can go to iOS Settings (the gear icon on the Home screen) and go to Safari> Advanced> Website Data to see the list of all websites for which Data has been saved on the smartphone. At this point, you must press the item Remove all website data at the bottom and confirm by pressing the item Remove now to delete all the cache data.
Otherwise, you can operate on individual sites by pressing the Edit item at the top right and swiping the sites to be deleted. Another option that could help you free up space on the iPhone is the one related to deactivating the Automatically save offline lever in the Settings> Safari menu, which avoids saving the pages added to the Safari Reading List locally. What do you say? Don’t you usually surf the Net with Safari from your “iPhone,” and would you like to understand how to clear the cache in other browsers? Don’t worry. Everything is explained below.
- Chrome – tap on the button (…) located at the bottom right, go to Settings> Privacy> Clear browsing data, check the item Cookies, site data, click on the clear browsing data option (at the bottom of the displayed screen) and confirm.
- Firefox – press the ☰ button at the bottom right, go to Settings> Data management, activate the Cache lever, press the Delete personal data item (at the bottom of the screen), and confirm.
- Edge – press the button (…) located in the lower center. The Settings button in the menu goes to Privacy and security> Clear browsing data, check the cache option, press the item Clear browsing data, and confirm.
By following the same procedures described above and selecting the options to clear history and other browsing data, you can also remove other information saved in browsers, not just the cache. But be careful: if you have activated the synchronization of browsing data via the cloud, you will delete the data in question from the iPhone and all the devices connected to the same account. Take this into account before doing anything. Finally, if clearing the cache did not help you free up enough space on your iPhone, I strongly invite you to consult my guide on how to free up memory on your iPhone: there, you will find some more effective “tips” to remedy the storage shortage. On your smartphone.
Also Read: MOMENTS: THE SOCIAL COMPONENT OF WECHAT