#CLEAR MAC LOG FILES HOW TO#
#CLEAR MAC LOG FILES MAC OS#
#CLEAR MAC LOG FILES SOFTWARE#

The safest way to clean out the Mac system caches and temporary system files is by simply rebooting the Mac as discussed here. There are various system level cache files and folders and most of them should never be manually interfered with, doing so can result in all sorts of unexpected behaviors or worse.

#CLEAR MAC LOG FILES SOFTWARE#

The above method covers deleting and cleaning out caches and temporary files from the active user account, but the Mac system software and system level apps can also create temporary files and cache files.

#CLEAR MAC LOG FILES HOW TO#

How to Clear Out System Caches and Temporary System Files on Mac If you are aiming to clean out web browser caches, a better approach is to empty cache in Safari on the Mac or empty cache in Chrome on the Mac, both of which can be done directly from the web browser apps themselves.Īs mentioned multiple times, it is not necessary nor is it recommended to manually remove and clean caches yourself like this, unless you have a specific reason to do so, typically for troubleshooting. This caches and temporary files folder is not intended to be user facing or user friendly, so don’t expect it to be. To find a specific app cache, you’d look for a folder of file that matches the name, for example the contents of “” would contain the Safari caches. * The caches folder will contain many nonsensical file names and folder names, with names like “” and “” and many others.

#CLEAR MAC LOG FILES MAC OS#

Empty the Trash in Mac OS as usual to clear those cache and temporary files from the Mac.

Choose which caches and temporary files to clear, you can selectively choose specific app caches and temporary files to clean*, or select them all, then place those cache items into the Trash.

Once inside the Library folder, find and open the “Caches” folder.

Choose “Library” from the Go menu options.

Hold down the SHIFT key (in Sierra) or OPTION / ALT key (Earlier) and pull down the “Go” menu in the Finder.

After a fresh backup has completed, here is how to delete and clear cache and temp files from the active user: How to Clean All Caches and Temporary Files from Macīackup your Mac with Time Machine before beginning. Backing up insures that if you mess up, or if something goes awry, you have a recent backup handy to restore the computer to. You should always back up your Mac before performing any procedure like this. If you don’t have a specific reason to clear Mac caches, don’t do it. Sometimes it might help particular app performance, but usually it does not. Despite what some “cleaner” apps might claim, cleaning our Mac cache and temporary files is not going to give your computer a magical super performance boost or make you more popular with the ladies and gents, all it does is remove temporary files from the computer. Generally you’d only want to trash caches if they’re hogging a large amount of storage capacity, or if a particular app is not functioning properly or is serving stale data served from old cache. To be clear this is not a recommended task, nor is clearing caches and temporary files on a Mac something that you should need to perform.

There are no downloads or third party tools required. This walkthrough will show you how to manually clear and clean out caches and temporary files from the active user on a Mac.

Clear mac log files