Clearing Your Cache: What, Why, How?

November 29, 2016

Caching is a process used to keep things we use in many aspects of our life to keep those things that are most important to a situation readily at hand for easy access. It’s used in self storage, office organization, military applications, and even in computing. Welcome back to #TechTuesday, where we are going to tell you just what that cache is, and how cleaning it up can speed up your browser!

Cash? Cash-ay?

In computing, when we hear of the word “cache”, many think immediately to our browsing habits. Ever wonder how some webpages you commonly visit seem to load so much faster than counterparts that you do not visit too frequently? This is because all of that data, such as the pictures loaded on the page, animations, hyperlinks, and other data intensive objects on a page are saved to a cache when you first visit the page. This allows your computer to access that page easier when you visit it next, saving load times and data usage. It is also why you can sometimes view past versions of a website offline to pull up data when needed. While caching does extend to other processes on your computer, such as file searches and indexing, we want to focus on speeding up that web browser when times get slow.

Should I Clean It?

When you visit a webpage, your browser checks if a copy of the files on the page is in its cache already. if they are, it will save you time from having to download all of those buttons and images all over again, simply loading the data from a local storage rather than waiting for them to be downloaded again. This cache is commonly referred to as our Temporary Internet Files. While this is useful for those visiting the same few pages, it can actually vastly slow down your browser over time due to the constant build up of new cached files from a wide range of browsing. For example, visiting several articles a day, binge watching a series on YouTube while you fill out some paperwork, and pulling up Amazon to cash in (See what I did there? Cash? No, just me?) on some of those Black Friday savings for the holiday season will generate a lot of temporary internet data being stored client side. While useful if you’re comparing notes between the pages, this excess of data means that your newer webpages will progressively begin to load slower and slower. Sometimes, your cache could do with a bit of cleaning up, just to keep things fresh.

Time To Cache Out

Some situations arise where just bypassing the cache is preferred, whether due to slow load times, or just simply because old data is being loaded as an error in the browser. Refreshing sometimes solves these issues, but not always as it may simply reuse old files from the cache. Depending on your browser of choice, the process of refreshing your cache can vary just slightly. As an example, I will list the steps for clearing it via our preferred browser here at S-FX.com, Google Chrome.

  1. In the top right of the window, click the “Three Dots” or “Three Dashes” depending on your version, and navigate down to the “Settings” menu.
  2. On the left of the screen in the navigation bar, click the “History” menu.
  3. Click on “Clear Browsing Data…”
  4. Select “Empty the Cache” from the list, as well as any other options you may wish to clear (We recommend periodically clearing your history and your cookies for privacy and security.)
  5. Click the “Clear browsing data” button at the bottom.

This process is generally consistent through most browsers, save for slight variation on menu button locations and names. But if you have trouble finding it personally, we always recommend a visit to RefreshYourCache, where they have some more tutorials specific to most browsers across a variety of platforms. Catch you next week on #TechTuesdays!

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