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How to clear the Chrome cache on your Mac

Chrome is generous with disk space. Between its HTTP cache, service worker storage, GPU shader cache and per-profile data, a browser you have used daily for a couple of years can easily hold several gigabytes. Clearing it is straightforward once you know which of Chrome's overlapping controls does what, and which folders you should never delete by hand.

Updated 2026-08-02 · Written by the CleanerMac team · macOS 13–15 tested

The built-in way: Clear browsing data

Chrome's own dialog is the safest route because it understands its own databases and updates the indexes correctly.

1. Type chrome://settings/clearBrowserData in the address bar, or press Shift-Command-Delete.
2. Switch to the Advanced tab to see the full list of categories.
3. Choose a time range. All time is the only option that clears everything.
4. Tick Cached images and files. Leave the others unticked if you want to keep your sessions.
5. Click Clear data.

The categories matter more than people expect. Here is what each one costs you:

Clearing one site instead of everything

For a single misbehaving site, open the page, click the icon at the left of the address bar, choose Cookies and site data, then Manage on-device site data and delete. Or go to chrome://settings/content/all, search the domain, and remove it. This resets that one site without logging you out of anything else. A hard reload also helps: with DevTools open, right-click the reload button and choose Empty Cache and Hard Reload.

Where Chrome keeps everything on macOS

Chrome splits its storage across two trees, which is why deleting one of them rarely frees as much as expected:

• ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome is the main profile tree. Inside it, Default is your first profile and Profile 1, Profile 2 and so on are additional ones. This holds history, bookmarks, extensions, IndexedDB, service workers and local storage.
• ~/Library/Caches/Google/Chrome holds the HTTP cache, the code cache and the GPU shader cache. This is the part that grows fastest.

Two files inside the profile deserve a mention because people delete them by accident. Bookmarks is a plain JSON file with all your bookmarks, and there is a Bookmarks.bak alongside it. Login Data holds saved passwords, encrypted against your Keychain. Neither is a cache. If you are doing anything manual in that folder, copy those two out first.

Why deleting Chrome folders by hand is risky

Chrome uses LevelDB and SQLite databases with separate index and log files. Removing a directory while Chrome is running, or removing only part of a database set, produces a profile Chrome considers corrupt. The usual symptoms are extensions disappearing, a profile that resets to a fresh state on launch, or Chrome opening with a warning that your settings could not be restored. Always quit Chrome completely before touching anything under Application Support, and prefer the in-browser controls whenever they can do the job.

Profiles are the hidden space multiplier

Every Chrome profile carries its own full set of caches, extensions and storage. Signing in with a second Google account creates a second profile, and a family Mac with four profiles is carrying four copies of everything. Visit chrome://settings/manageProfile or the profile switcher to see what exists, and remove profiles nobody uses. This is frequently the largest single win available, far bigger than clearing the cache.

Other things labelled Chrome that are not the cache

• Google Software Update installs a background updater in ~/Library/Google and ~/Library/Application Support/Google/GoogleUpdater. Small, but it persists after you delete Chrome.
• Extensions live inside each profile and some, particularly ad blockers and password managers, keep large local databases.
• Offline site data from progressive web apps is stored per site and survives a plain cache clear. Remove it from chrome://settings/content/all.
• Crash reports and logs accumulate in ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Crashpad.

If you are removing Chrome entirely

Dragging Chrome.app to the Trash leaves both of the trees above in place, often several gigabytes of them, plus the updater. That is the general pattern with macOS apps rather than anything specific to Google. Our guide to uninstalling apps completely explains how to find the leftovers, and CleanerMac's Smart Uninstaller matches them by bundle identifier so nothing is left behind.

Clearing every browser in one pass

If you run Chrome alongside Safari, Firefox or Arc, each maintains its own separate cache and none of them clear each other. CleanerMac scans all of them together with your app and system caches, shows what each is holding, and clears them in one action, and lists every item so you can deselect a browser you are still using. Every item is listed with its size before anything is removed.

A realistic expectation

Clearing the Chrome cache will not make Chrome faster; it makes the next few page loads slower while the cache refills. What it does reliably is fix stale content, resolve a site stuck on an old JavaScript bundle, and reclaim disk space. If Chrome itself feels slow, the cause is usually extensions or too many open tabs holding memory, in which case freeing up RAM and auditing extensions at chrome://extensions will do far more. For the broader picture on Mac caches, see our guide to clearing caches safely.

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