Box Drive Cache on Mac: Where It Lives and How to Clear It Without Losing Files

If you have noticed your disk shrinking despite not downloading anything deliberately, Box Drive cache on Mac is a likely culprit. Box Drive keeps local copies of recently accessed cloud files so they open quickly the next time you need them — a convenience feature that can quietly balloon into several gigabytes on a busy machine. This guide explains exactly where that cache sits, how big it realistically gets, and how to clear it safely without touching your actual Box files.

How Box Drive Uses Your Local Disk

Box Drive is a virtual file system layer, not a traditional sync client. When you open a file, Box Drive streams it from the cloud and caches it locally so subsequent opens are instant. Files you mark as Offline are stored in full and stay on disk intentionally. Everything else is temporary — but macOS does not automatically evict that temporary data on any fixed schedule, so it accumulates.

On Apple Silicon Macs (M1 through M4) running macOS Sequoia or Tahoe, this behavior is unchanged from Intel. The cache location, clearing procedure, and safety implications are identical across both architectures.

Where Box Drive Cache Lives on Mac

Box Drive scatters its data across three locations in your home folder. Understanding which folder does what is essential before you delete anything.

You can navigate directly to ~/Library by opening Finder, holding Option, clicking the Go menu, and selecting Library. The tilde (~) always refers to your home directory, for example /Users/yourname.

How Much Space Can the Cache Actually Use?

The answer depends almost entirely on your workflow. A designer who previews large video files through Box Drive can accumulate 20 GB or more in the cache subfolder over a few weeks. A knowledge worker who mostly opens PDFs and spreadsheets might see only 500 MB. The caches folder at ~/Library/Caches/com.box.desktop is generally the quickest win because it holds thumbnail strips and partial chunk files that Box Drive will recreate on demand.

To check sizes before you delete anything, open Terminal and run:

du -sh ~/Library/Caches/com.box.desktop
du -sh "~/Library/Application Support/Box/Box/cache"
du -sh ~/Library/Logs/Box

Each command prints a human-readable total so you know which location is worth tackling first.

Will Clearing the Cache Delete My Box Files?

No. Your actual files live in the cloud on Box's servers. The local cache is nothing more than a local mirror of data that Box can re-download the next time you open those files. The only exception is content you have explicitly pinned as Available Offline inside Box Drive — those files are stored intentionally in ~/Library/Application Support/Box/Box/cache and should not be deleted unless you are prepared to re-download them or no longer need offline access.

To check what you have pinned offline: open the Box Drive menubar icon, go to Preferences > Account, and look at the Offline Files section. Alternatively, right-click any folder in your Box virtual drive in Finder and look for a checkmark next to Make Available Offline.

How to Clear Box Drive Cache on Mac (Step-by-Step)

1. Quit Box Drive completely. Click the Box Drive icon in the macOS menu bar, then choose Quit Box Drive. This is mandatory — deleting cache files while Box Drive is running can corrupt its local index and force a full re-sync.
2. Open Terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal).
3. Delete the Caches folder contents:

   rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/com.box.desktop

   Box Drive recreates this folder automatically on next launch.
4. Delete the cache subfolder inside Application Support (streamed blocks only — skip if you need offline files):

   rm -rf "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Box/Box/cache"

5. Optionally clear logs:

   rm -rf ~/Library/Logs/Box

6. Relaunch Box Drive from Applications. It will re-index your account (usually takes under a minute) and rebuild the cache on demand as you open files.

After relaunch, the first time you open any previously cached file, Box Drive will re-download it. On a fast connection this is almost imperceptible for typical office documents.

Using Box Drive's Built-In Free Up Space Feature

Box Drive has a lighter-touch option that does not require Terminal. Right-click any folder or file in Finder under your Box Drive virtual mount, and choose Free Up Space. This evicts the local cached copy and marks the item as cloud-only again, without removing it from Box. The file remains fully accessible — Box Drive simply re-downloads it when you next open it. This approach is safer than manually deleting the cache folder because Box Drive manages the operation internally and does not touch offline-pinned content.

Use Free Up Space when you want to reclaim space for a specific folder (such as a large project archive) rather than clearing the entire cache at once.

Box Drive Cache vs. Other Cloud Sync Caches

Box Drive is not unique in building up hidden storage. Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive all maintain similar local caches, and they can compound quickly on machines that use multiple cloud services. If you are investigating disk usage across your whole system, the article on what is taking up space on your Mac shows a methodical approach to finding space hogs across every category, not just cloud sync. For a deeper look at cache files in general — what they are, where they come from, and when it is safe to delete them — see the guide on cache files on a Mac.

A tool like Crumb can audit all of these caches at once and show you what is safe to remove before anything is deleted, which removes the guesswork when you have several cloud services installed side by side.

Preventing Cache Bloat Over Time

A few habits keep Box Drive cache under control without manual intervention:

• Audit offline pins regularly. Every file or folder marked offline is pinned to disk indefinitely. Review the list every month or two and unpin anything you no longer need offline.
• Use Free Up Space on large project archives. When a project wraps up, right-click its Box folder and free up the local copy. The files stay in the cloud safely.
• Avoid previewing very large media through Box Drive. Streaming a 4 K video through Box Drive downloads and caches the entire file. If you need to review large media frequently, download it explicitly to a scratch folder and delete it when done.
• Schedule a quarterly cache clear. Set a calendar reminder every three months to quit Box Drive and run the rm -rf commands above. Five minutes of maintenance prevents a sudden 10 GB surprise before a big software install.

Box Drive does not provide an in-app setting to auto-expire cached files after a set number of days, so manual maintenance or a third-party disk-management tool remains the most reliable strategy as of macOS Tahoe.