How to Clear Safari Cache and Website Data on Mac (2026 Guide)

When Safari starts loading pages slowly, showing stale content, or behaving unexpectedly, the first thing Apple support will suggest is to clear Safari cache on your Mac. It is a genuinely effective fix — browser caches are designed to make the web feel faster, but over months of use they accumulate gigabytes of outdated files that can cause more problems than they solve. This guide walks through every method available in 2026, covering macOS Sequoia and the forthcoming Tahoe release, on both Apple Silicon and Intel machines.

What Does Safari Actually Cache?

Safari maintains several distinct layers of stored data. Understanding what each one holds will help you decide how aggressively to clean up.

• Disk cache — compressed copies of images, scripts, stylesheets, and fonts so pages load faster on repeat visits.
• Website data — cookies, local storage, IndexedDB, and WebSQL databases set by individual sites.
• History — the list of pages you have visited, stored separately from the cache.
• Favicons — small icon files Safari keeps for bookmarks and history entries.
• Media cache — video and audio buffered by streaming sites.

The disk cache lives on the filesystem at ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/. Website data is written to ~/Library/Safari/ and to ~/Library/WebKit/com.apple.Safari/. You rarely need to touch those paths directly — the methods below handle them safely.

How Much Space Is Safari Using?

Before you clear anything it is worth knowing what you are actually dealing with. Cache sizes vary enormously depending on how heavily you browse and how long it has been since you last cleared. The table below shows typical ranges observed on macOS Sequoia after different intervals.

Heavy media streaming or keeping many tabs open for weeks can push totals well past these ranges. If you are investigating what else is eating your drive space, see what is taking up space on my Mac for a broader picture.

How to Clear Safari Cache on Mac: Step-by-Step

There are two primary approaches: using Safari's built-in menu options, or using the Develop menu for a faster one-click cache purge. Both are covered below.

Method 1 — Clear Website Data via Safari Preferences

This is the safest and most selective method. It removes cookies, local storage, and cached content on a per-site or all-sites basis.

1. Open Safari and choose Safari > Settings (or press Command ,).
2. Click the Privacy tab.
3. Click Manage Website Data…
4. Wait for the list to populate — this can take a few seconds on large caches.
5. To remove data for specific sites, select them and click Remove. To wipe everything, click Remove All.
6. Confirm the dialog that warns you will be signed out of sites.

After you click Remove All, Safari deletes the contents of both ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/ and ~/Library/WebKit/com.apple.Safari/WebsiteData/. The folders themselves remain; Safari recreates them on the next launch.

Method 2 — Empty the Disk Cache via the Develop Menu

The Develop menu exposes a separate disk-cache flush that does not touch cookies or stored data. It is useful when you are debugging a web page or testing a site change.

1. Open Safari > Settings > Advanced and check Show features for web developers if the Develop menu is not already visible.
2. In the menu bar, click Develop > Empty Caches (keyboard shortcut: Option Command E).

This flushes only the on-disk resource cache. Cookies, logins, and website data are untouched, so you stay signed in everywhere.

Method 3 — Clear Safari History

Clearing history removes the visited-pages list and, in Safari on macOS, also deletes associated cookies and cache for those pages. To do this:

1. Choose History > Clear History… from the Safari menu bar.
2. Select a time range: last hour, today, today and yesterday, or all history.
3. Click Clear History.

Choosing "all history" here produces a more thorough cleanup than just the Privacy settings route because it also removes favicons and some additional per-page metadata from ~/Library/Safari/History.db.

Clearing Safari Cache from the Finder (Manual Method)

If Safari is refusing to launch or you need to clear the cache while Safari is closed, you can remove files directly in Finder.

1. Quit Safari completely — Safari > Quit Safari or Command Q.
2. In Finder, press Command Shift G and paste: ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari
3. Select all files inside that folder and move them to the Trash.
4. Optionally, repeat for ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.WebKit.Networking and ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.WebKit.GPU.
5. Empty the Trash.

Do not delete the parent com.apple.Safari folder itself — only its contents. Safari will repopulate the folder on next launch.

Clearing Safari Cache for All Users on a Shared Mac

Each user account on macOS has its own Safari cache at that user's ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/. Clearing the cache in your account does not affect other users. If you are an administrator preparing a Mac to pass on or hand off, you would need to log in to each user account and run the steps above, or use a tool like Crumb that can audit all user caches from a single interface and show you exactly what is safe to remove before anything is deleted.

How Often Should You Clear Safari Cache?

There is no universal rule, but a few situations call for a cache clear:

• Pages look broken or are showing outdated content after a site update.
• You are troubleshooting a login issue and cookies may be corrupt.
• Your Mac is running low on disk space and browser caches are a quick win.
• You are handing the Mac to someone else and want to remove stored credentials.

For routine maintenance, clearing every one to three months is a reasonable cadence for heavy users. Developers testing web projects may want to use the Develop > Empty Caches option far more frequently — it is fast and non-destructive to saved logins.

Will Clearing Safari Cache Delete Passwords or Bookmarks?

No. Safari passwords live in the system Keychain at ~/Library/Keychains/, not in the cache. Bookmarks are stored in ~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist. Neither of these locations is touched by any of the cache-clearing methods above. You will, however, be signed out of websites once cookies are removed, so have your passwords ready — or use iCloud Keychain to fill them back in automatically.

Browser Cache vs. System Cache: What Else to Check

Safari's cache is only one slice of your Mac's total cache footprint. macOS also maintains system-level caches, kernel extension caches, and app-specific caches in ~/Library/Caches/ that can collectively consume several gigabytes. If you want to go further after cleaning Safari, see our guide on how to clear system cache on Mac for a safe walkthrough of those locations.

The key principle is the same: identify what is there, understand what it belongs to, and only remove what you can confidently regenerate. Safari will rebuild its cache automatically as you browse; system caches rebuild on next launch or on reboot.