How many times have you been surfing the web on your iPhone and the loading times of a particular page take forever? Yes, sometimes it can be the website, but if loading times are unusually longer and your internet connection is fine, most likely that’s your sign to clear your cache. If you were honest, when was the last time you reset your phone’s web cache?
It’s easy to clear your iPhone cache in Chrome.
James Martin/CNET
Chrome is another popular browser for iPhone users. Google has simplified the process for clearing your Chrome cache, making it much faster to clear your data.
1. Open the Chrome app.
2. Select the three dots in the bottom right to open more options.
3. Swipe over to Settings in the top menu bar.
4. Scroll down and tap Privacy and security.
5. Tap Delete browsing data to open up another menu. Select the intended time range at the top of the menu (anywhere from Last 15 minutes to All time). Make sure that Cookies and Site Data are checked, along with Cached Images and Files. Finally, hit Delete data at the bottom of the screen.
How to clear your iPhone cache in Firefox
If you’re a Firefox devotee, don’t worry. Clearing the cache on your iPhone is straightforward. Just follow these steps.
1. Press the hamburger menu in the bottom right corner to open up options.
2. Choose Settings at the bottom of the menu.
3. Select Data Management in the Privacy section.
4. To clear everything, choose Web Site Data at the top of the menu and then Clear All Web SiteData. Alternatively, you can choose to clear just your browsing history, cache, cookies, offline web data, tracking protection or offline files.
What happens when you clear the cache?
Clearing your cache removes the website data your phone stored locally to prevent having to download that data upon each new visit. The data in your cache builds over time and can end up being an issue if that data winds up out of date. (My phone had about 150MB of data stored in Chrome when I checked.) Clearing that data gives sites a fresh start, which may fix some loading errors. But clearing your cache also signs you out of pages, so be prepared to sign in to everything again.
How often do I need to clear my cache?
Most people only need to clear their caches once every month or two. That’s generally the point when your browser will build up a cache large enough to start slowing things down. If you frequent a large number of sites, you should err on the side of clearing your cache more often.