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

To clear the cache in Safari on a Mac and keep your history and logins, turn on the Develop menu in Safari settings and choose Develop > Empty Caches. If you want history and cookies gone too, use Clear History instead. If only one site is misbehaving, remove the data for that site alone. The three methods are below, with what each one removes.

Empty the cache only

1. Open Safari and choose Safari > Settings from the menu bar, or press Cmd + Comma.
2. Click the Advanced tab.
3. Tick Show features for web developers. On older versions of Safari the box is called Show Develop menu in menu bar.
4. Close Settings. A Develop menu now sits in the menu bar between Bookmarks and Window.
5. Choose Develop > Empty Caches.

Nothing appears to happen, but the stored copies of images, scripts and style sheets are gone. Your history, cookies and logins stay as they were. Reload the page you were having trouble with to fetch a fresh copy.

Remove the data for one website

1. Choose Safari > Settings and click the Privacy tab.
2. Click Manage Website Data and wait for the list to load.
3. Type the site name in the search field.
4. Select the site and click Remove, then Done.

This removes the cache and the cookies for that site, so expect to sign in to it again. It is the right choice when one site shows an old layout or will not load while the rest of the web is fine.

Clear history, cookies and cache together

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

This is the widest of the three. Along with the list of pages you visited, Safari removes cookies and cached data for the period you chose, so you will be signed out of most sites. If Safari is switched on in your iCloud settings, the history is removed from your other devices as well.

What to expect afterwards

• The first visit to each site is a little slower, because Safari downloads everything again. After that it is back to normal.
• The cache starts to fill again straight away. That is how it is meant to work, so there is no need to empty it on a schedule.
• Saved passwords, bookmarks and the Reading List are not touched by any of these methods.
• The space you get back depends on how much you browse. It can range from a few megabytes to a few gigabytes.

What MacPrune does about browser caches

MacPrune v2.0 has a Clean page that scans the Mac and lists what it finds in three groups. Browser Caches is in the first group, Safe to clean, and covers Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Brave, Arc and Edge in one scan, so you can see how much each browser is holding before you decide. What you choose moves to the Trash after a confirmation, and the space is freed when the Trash is emptied. The app offers to empty it once the clean is done.

MacPrune removes cache files only. It does not clear browsing history or cookies, so for those use the Safari steps above. Cleaning browser caches is part of the free version.

If you use more than one browser, you can download MacPrune and clear them together. Related guides: clearing the cache in Chrome, clearing every browser cache on a Mac and reducing System Data.