Every browser does the same thing; that is connecting to a website’s server and downloading those files to display them to the end users. For that functioning, any browser will maintain a folder where all the cache will be saved, its also known as the temporary Internet files. That folder named cache will store images, audio, video, CSS, web pages and other locally saved content that helps in displaying web pages more quickly and swiftly.
Now, before moving ahead and learning about the clearing cache in Google Chrome, you need to understand the basics, pros and cons of clearing that cache.
Advantages and disadvantages of Removing files from Cache folder:
- Cache folder over the time will collect an enormous amount of files, and it may eat a lot of you disk space which in turn can slow down your PC or Laptop.
- It may happen that while browsing websites you may be displayed with older content, and fresh content is getting ignored completely, all this because of cache.
- You may be storing files that are incomplete and corrupt, it means website displayed on your browser are not up to the mark.
- Now if you clear all the cache than all the browser memory will be cleared and if you removed everything from your system, you may lose some of your username/passwords for your frequently visited sites.
- After clearing the cache, any website will be loading at a slower rate due to no cache files and they have to be downloaded again, which is done automatically.
Here are simple and quick steps for clearing cache in Chrome
All the steps are specifically for the latest version of Google Chrome, but they may be similar to another version as well.
1. Click on Chrome menu icon, located the extreme top right corner of your browser, after the address bar.
2. Next you will see options and many menu items, one of them is More Tools > Clear browsing data. These two steps can be shorted out by using Ctrl+Shift+Delete on your keyboard.
3. Another screen will appear as a popup, shown below. It will give you options to select other browsing data and cache files that can be deleted.
4. To clear only the browser cache, tick mark option that reads “Empty the cache” and leave all other unchecked. From the drop down menu, we would suggest using ‘beginning of time.’ Then, click on clear browsing data once you have done everything else.
Shortest way: In your browser URL bar cop-paste (without quotes):
“chrome://chrome/settings/clearBrowserData”
OR
“chrome://chrome/history/”
plus click on Clear all browsing data key.
Conclusion:
With all the pros and cons of clearing cache, it will all depend on how your computer is behaving. If it is fast enough, then you will never want to remove that cache, and for any reason it goes slow then always make sure you clear the cache before trying any more tricks for computer speed.
In the end, if you face an issue regarding browser cache, you can open a private/incognito mode. If your concern is not resolved, then you have to look forward to something other than clearing the cache.