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How to clear the Safari cache on your Mac

Safari keeps a local copy of the pages, images, scripts and stylesheets you visit so sites load faster on the next visit. That is usually a good thing, until a cached file goes stale and a site starts rendering incorrectly, showing an old logo, or refusing to log you in. Clearing the cache fixes that class of problem, and it is worth knowing how to do it without also throwing away your history and passwords.

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

Cache, history and website data are three different things

Safari's own interface blurs these together, which is why people accidentally sign themselves out of every site when all they wanted was to force a page to reload properly. Understanding the distinction saves a lot of annoyance:

If your goal is fixing a broken-looking page, you want the first row only.

The cache-only method: the Develop menu

Safari hides the pure cache clear behind its developer tools. Turning them on takes one visit to Settings and is worth doing permanently.

1. Open Safari, Settings (Command-comma) and go to the Advanced tab.
2. Tick Show features for web developers. On older versions of Safari this checkbox is worded Show Develop menu in menu bar.
3. A Develop menu now appears in the menu bar. Choose Develop, Empty Caches, or press Option-Command-E.

That clears the cache and nothing else. Your logins, history and saved passwords are untouched. Reload the page with Command-R, or force a bypass of any remaining cached resource with Option-Command-R.

Clearing cookies and website data for one site

When a single site misbehaves, there is no reason to nuke every site's data. Go to Safari, Settings, Privacy, Manage Website Data. Search for the domain, select it, and click Remove. This deletes that site's cookies, local storage and caches while leaving every other site logged in. It is the correct first move for a site stuck in a login loop or showing a stale paywall.

Clearing history, which also clears more than history

Choosing History, Clear History and picking a time range removes history, cookies and other browsing data for that period. Be aware that this signs you out of sites, so only reach for it when you genuinely want a clean slate. Since Safari 17 you can also limit the clear to the current profile rather than all of them, which is useful if you keep work and personal browsing separate.

Where Safari stores its files

For the curious, and for cases where you want to see how much space is involved:

• ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari holds the main cache database.
• ~/Library/Safari holds history, bookmarks, reading list, top sites and per-site settings.
• ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Safari holds container data for the sandboxed parts of the browser.
• ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.WebKit.WebContent and ~/Library/WebKit hold WebKit-level caches shared with other apps that embed web views.

Deleting these by hand while Safari is running is a bad idea. Safari holds open file handles on the databases, and removing them mid-session can produce a corrupted history file or a browser that will not launch cleanly. Quit Safari fully first if you insist on doing it manually. The Develop menu route does the same job safely with the browser open.

Offline reading list and downloads

Two Safari-related space hogs are not caches at all and will not be touched by any of the steps above. The Reading List can store full offline copies of saved pages, which accumulate over years; you can disable this under Safari, Settings, Advanced. And your Downloads folder is where installer disk images go to die. Both are worth a look if Safari appears to be occupying an unreasonable amount of disk. Our guide to finding large files makes short work of the second one.

What clearing the cache will and will not fix

It genuinely helps with: a page showing outdated content after the site was updated, broken or missing images, a layout that looks wrong in Safari but fine elsewhere, and a web app stuck on an old JavaScript bundle. It will not help with a slow internet connection, a site that is down, DNS resolution failures, or a Mac that is slow across all applications.

If pages are slow to start loading but fast once they begin, the problem is name resolution rather than the browser cache, and you should flush the DNS cache instead. If everything on the Mac is sluggish, start with the general speed-up guide.

Doing it across every browser at once

Most people run more than one browser, and each keeps its own separate cache. Clearing Safari does nothing for Chrome, and vice versa. If you want the whole lot handled in a single pass, CleanerMac scans browser caches alongside app and system caches and clears them together, 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.

How often is worth it

There is no maintenance benefit to clearing your cache on a schedule. A healthy cache makes browsing faster and costs a modest amount of disk. Clear it when a site is misbehaving, when you are testing changes to a website you are building, or when you are genuinely short on disk space. For the broader routine, see the maintenance checklist, and for the general principles behind cache clearing, this guide covers the rest of the system.

Clear every browser cache at once

Safari, Chrome and the rest, in a single safe pass.

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