Apple Music Cache on Mac: Where It Is and How to Clear It Without Losing Downloads

If your Mac's storage is tighter than you'd like, the Apple Music cache on your Mac is worth a close look. The Music app accumulates several categories of hidden data over time — artwork caches, streaming buffers, download metadata, and more — and none of it is surfaced clearly in System Settings. This guide explains exactly where each piece lives, which ones are safe to remove, and how to clear them without accidentally deleting the songs you intentionally downloaded for offline listening.

Why Apple Music Builds Up Cache

Apple Music stores temporary data for two main reasons: speed and continuity. When you stream a track, macOS buffers audio data locally so playback stays smooth during brief network hiccups. When you browse album art or artist pages, the app caches those images so they load instantly on the next visit. Neither category is content you explicitly chose to keep — it's opportunistic storage the app created on your behalf.

On a busy machine this can balloon quietly. Users who stream several hours a day, use the Mac as a home audio hub, or sync large libraries through iCloud Music Library can find the Music app touching multiple gigabytes of cache across several folders.

Where Apple Music Cache Lives on Mac

Music's data is spread across three separate locations inside your home folder. Understanding the difference between them is the key to clearing cache confidently.

1. The General Cache Folder

Transient data — streaming audio segments, manifest files, and network responses — ends up here:

This is the safest folder to clear. The Music app recreates everything inside it on demand. No downloaded tracks are stored here.

2. Album Artwork Cache

Cover art fetched from Apple's servers is stored separately under:

Even though iTunes itself is gone, macOS still uses this path for backward-compatible artwork caching. On some systems you may also see artwork stored inside the Music media folder described below.

3. Music Library and Downloads

Your actual music files — both local imports and tracks you've downloaded for offline playback — live in a completely different location:

The downloaded tracks you care about protecting are nested under ~/Music/Music/Media.localized/Apple Music/. Never delete this folder or its contents. The library database that ties everything together is:

How to Clear Apple Music Cache on Mac (Step by Step)

Follow these steps carefully. The key rule: quit Music before touching any cache folder, so the app doesn't rewrite files mid-deletion.

1. Quit Music completely. Choose Music > Quit Music from the menu bar, or press Command-Q. Verify it's gone in Activity Monitor if you want to be thorough.
2. Open the cache folder in Finder. Press Command-Shift-G in Finder, paste ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Music, and press Return.
3. Review the contents. You'll typically see subfolders like fsCachedData and various plist caches. Select everything inside the folder — not the folder itself — and move it to the Trash.
4. Repeat for the artwork cache. Go to ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.iTunes and move its contents to the Trash.
5. Empty the Trash. Right-click the Trash icon and choose Empty Trash. Space is only reclaimed after this step.
6. Relaunch Music. The app will rebuild both cache folders from scratch. Album artwork may take a minute to reload as the app re-fetches images from Apple's servers.

If you'd rather not navigate these paths manually, a tool like understanding what cache files are can help you decide what's safe first — and tools like Crumb can audit all of these locations at once and show you exactly what's safe to remove before anything is deleted.

Clearing Cache via Terminal

If you're comfortable with the command line, you can clear both caches in one step. Paste these commands one at a time in Terminal:

osascript -e 'quit app "Music"'

rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Music/*

rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.iTunes/*

The /* at the end of each path deletes the contents of the folder while leaving the folder itself in place, which is important — Music expects both directories to exist when it launches.

How to Remove Downloaded Tracks Without Breaking Your Library

If your goal is to remove specific downloaded tracks (not cache), do it through the Music app itself — not through Finder — so the library database stays consistent.

1. In the Music sidebar, click Downloaded under Library.
2. Select one or more tracks, albums, or playlists you no longer need offline.
3. Right-click and choose Remove Download. The track disappears from local storage but remains in your iCloud Music Library, ready to re-download anytime.

This is the right approach when you want to free up disk space from offline content while keeping your library intact. It is especially useful if you're on a smaller-storage MacBook and need to reclaim a few gigabytes before a trip.

Does Apple Music Cache Affect System Data in Storage?

Yes. macOS rolls Music caches — and caches from most other apps — into the System Data bucket shown in System Settings > General > Storage. That's one reason System Data can look alarmingly large. If you've ever clicked that category and seen multi-gigabyte numbers with no clear explanation, Music's accumulated caches are a common contributor. For a fuller picture of what lives there, our guide on what System Data means on Mac storage breaks down all the categories.

How Often Should You Clear Apple Music Cache?

There's no required schedule. The Music app manages its own cache size to some degree, though it doesn't enforce strict limits. A few practical triggers to consider:

• Before a long trip when you need every gigabyte free for photos and video.
• After a macOS upgrade, when old cache files from the previous system version may be orphaned.
• If Music is behaving oddly — slow to display artwork, stuttering on previously smooth tracks — a cache clear is a low-risk first troubleshooting step.
• As part of a quarterly storage audit alongside other app caches.

Clearing cache has essentially no downside beyond a brief wait for artwork to reload. The app will never lose your library, your playlists, or your downloads as a result of removing these temporary files.

Apple Silicon vs. Intel: Any Differences?

The folder paths are identical on Apple Silicon (M1 through M4 and beyond) and Intel Macs running macOS Sonoma, Sequoia, or Tahoe. The only meaningful difference is speed: on Apple Silicon, the Music app rebuilds its cache noticeably faster after a clear, thanks to faster flash storage and the unified memory architecture. If you're on an older Intel machine, expect artwork to take a bit longer to reload, but the outcome is the same.