Your iPhone does a lot for you. It offers access to social media, email and answers to unexpected burning questions wherever you go. But what do you do for your iPhone? You probably move it back and forth between your pocket or purse and a hard, flat surface. Maybe you’ve even made it suffer the ignominy of being dropped in the toilet. It happens.
Just like every other piece of tech, your iPhone benefits from a little TLC, especially if your browsing starts to feel sluggish over time. Keep your iPhone 14 Pro, Pro Max or any other model moving as fast as possible by clearing your cache every month — it only takes a few seconds.
Whether you use Chrome, Safari or other browsers on your iPhone, your cache builds up digital clutter over time. Clearing your cache gives the browser a new start, which can speed up your web surfing, even on iOS 16.5 or the upcoming iOS 17. (And if you’re trying to get your phone to run faster, try managing your iPhone’s storage.)
Your browser cache acts like a digital shortcut — it stores website data so your browser has a head start the next time you load up that page. In the short term, that helps speed up the process. But over time, the data stored in your cache can become outdated and no longer match what the site actually needs. If that happens, pages will load slower, and the formatting might be wrong.
That’s why clearing your cache can help: It gives sites a fresh start in your browser and frees up some space in your storage.
Website cookies are similar, except they store information about user data, rather than data on the website itself. Clearing your cookies gives you a chance to reset those preferences, which could improve your browsing experience. Note that clearing your cache and cookies will log you out of sites, which means you’ll have to log into them again and reset any preferences. But the upfront investment of that time can lead to a smoother experience down the road, and it can be a useful fix if you’ve recently changed settings that aren’t being applied properly.
Here are step-by-step guides on how to clear your cache on your iPhone based on the browser you use.
How to clear your iPhone cache in Safari
Safari is the default browser on iPhones, and you can clear your Safari cache in a few short steps. Starting with iOS 11, following this process will affect all devices signed in to your iCloud account. As a result, all your devices’ caches will be cleared, and you’ll need to sign in to everything the next time you use them. Here’s what to do.
1.Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
2. Select Safari from the list of apps.
3. Go to Clear History and Website Data.
4. Choose Clear History and Data in the pop-up box.
