Is it safe to delete ~/Library/Caches?

s it safe to delete the file Caches, in the Library of the Mac OS X Hard Drive? It's a pretty big file, 3.56 GB, Caches reminds me of logs i don't need or browser cookies. Is it safe to delete the folder "Caches"? osx  hard-drive  file share improve this question edited Jul 30 '14 at 18:54 grgarside 72.3k 14 112 160 asked  Jan 27 '14 at 22:55 GummyArgyle 817 3 9 23
	1   Which folders have the most space? Command-J in list view lets you add up space per folder and sort. You only might need to clear a few and not slow down the programs that use the caches. –  bmike♦  Jan 27 '14 at 23:08 add a comment

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It's generally safe, though a little dangerous depending, to do it but often not worth the effort. The caches in /System/Library/Caches are generally small and useful, the ones in /Library/Caches are less system caches and much more readily cleared. If you have a look in ~/Library/Caches you will find a bunch of applications have a cache in there, none of them particularly large though dropbox sometimes has a fair sized cache. This folder can run quite large just because so many apps cache something in there. If the cache /Library/Caches folder is over 3Gb then you have something that is caching quite a lot. On the three machines I just checked none had a /Library/Caches folder over .75 Gb so I'd go right ahead and remove some of it. Don't worry about age, I'd worry about size. In the terminal run du -s /Library/Caches/* | sort -n and you will get a good idea of which are the larger caches. Of course the best way to clear the caches is to install AppleJack and do it with that in single user mode. Doing it with the System fully up can be a little dangerous. If you do it then I'd reboot immediately afterwards. share improve this answer edited Nov 17 '14 at 2:26 Simon Warta 103 2 answered  Jan 27 '14 at 23:14 Tony Williams 5,224 1 9 33

4   Note that "sort -n" doesn't play well with the "human readable" option (-h) in du. See for example,serverfault.com/questions/62411/… –  Aky  May 31 '14 at 18:31 3   I recommend that instead of using -h you use -m—it's much easier to read while still working with sort –  0942v8653  Nov 17 '14 at 2:59 Or brew install coreutils and use gsort -h instead of sort -n :) –  wikp  Nov 27 '15 at 8:48 add a comment

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up vote 3 down vote	Yes. However you may want to look inside the folder and selectively delete old caches rather then just dumping the whole folder. share improve this answer answered  Jan 27 '14 at 22:59 sdmeyers 1,456 3 12
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up vote 3 down vote	Have no fear, delete caches but I prefer to do it either via Single-User mode or I usehttp://www.titanium.free.fr/downloadonyx.php Check Onyx out as it does some good maintenance scripts as well. share improve this answer answered  Jan 28 '14 at 8:06 Andrew U. 1,247 4 9
	Thanks to who ever down voted without comment. That is super constructive –  Andrew U.  Jan 29 '14 at 8:48 add a comment

up vote 2 down vote	Yes it is safe. I usually reboot right after just to be sure but that is temporary file storage and can be deleted safely share improve this answer answered  Jan 27 '14 at 23:51 Steve Chambers 5,601 1 5 18
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up vote 2 down vote

I would not blindly delete all. If you want to do a safe clean up, use the browser tools for history and cookie clean up. My cache folder is 3.7 gig, and it does contains some important files, so I would not mess with it. For Safari use the Reset Safari function and select your choices. FYI, in my case the app Garmin (European GPS maps) was using >2gig in cache. Once I was done with it, I deleted it and now back to .7 gig. In summary, cleaning cache is usually best done by using the respective browser's tools, to delete all the junk accumulated from the web. If you delete something important by mistake that way, well go on the web and get it again. share improve this answer edited Jan 28 '14 at 9:12 answered  Jan 27 '14 at 23:16 Buscar웃 24.6k 4 25 76

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up vote 0 down vote

Yes, it is safe, but do not delete all the contents of your cache folder, clear out those taking up the most space in your ~/Library/Caches/. You shouldn't clear any contents of your /System/Caches unless there is a problem. As would be expected, you will find that the programs you access most often have the largest cache size. Always remember that caches improve the performance of your machine, and shouldn't be cleaned out regularly or blindly. There are only two reasons to clear out a cache: for space considerations, if it is growing to large, and as a troubleshoot in the event of a problem. share improve this answer answered  Jan 28 '14 at 13:35 njboot 4,669 2 10 38

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It's safe. But it is better to do it within the app, e.g. in Google Chrome (841 Mb) on my drive you can delete caches via History bar (⌘ Command Y), other apps may not be so friendly, especially messengers. I would advise you to check these folders as well: ~/Library/Logs ~/Library/Containers ~/Library/Application Support