How to clear the cache on iPhone? [Expert Guide]

Knowing how to free up some space in your iOS device is essential to keeping your iPhone in optimum shape. iPhone users understand that knowing how to clear the cache on iPhone protects their device from piling up junk files over time and ensures its tip-top performance. When your iPhone responds slowly to your phone taps and apps do not immediately open, there could be a need for you to clear your browser cache. You may not be aware or conscious that over a while the minimal files in your cache slowly build up and accumulates and, eventually, impact your iPhone’s speed. Surfing Safari and running several apps at the same time causes our iOS device to collect unnecessary files along the way. That is why it is important to declutter and free up some space in our iPhone’s cache.

Read on and learn more about how to clear the cache on iPhone.

What is Cache?

Your iPhone's cache is a reserved location in your device that preserves temporary data and helps websites and apps load faster. In other words, it is content from a website that is collected and stored in your iPhone during a browser session so that the next time you visit the same page, the browser performs more efficiently and quickly.

While this feature in your iPhone’s cache is crucial to making browning sites faster, the cache files generated through constant daily usage eat up your iPhone storage space over some time and reduce the running speed and efficiency of your iOS device.

Cached browsing data are not the only culprits that encroach into and eat up your iPhone’s storage space. Photographs, videos, scripts, and other media data that are generated by the apps you browse could also make up your iPhone’s cache data. Cache data could also be scripts, images, and other media files that are automatically generated by the apps. It is crucial to remember that an increase in the number of installed apps and an increase in the frequency with which you use these apps may result in an accumulation of more cache files. This impacts your iPhone’s speed efficiency due to the use of additional storage space. Regardless of the model or type of iPhone you use, regularly deleting cookies, and hidden junk files, and clearing cache on iPhone are not only effective means to clear up more iPhone storage space and boost your device’s running speed.

Moreover, because clearing up your iPhone app cache, app cookies, junk, and temporary files results in more storage space on your device, you will find many battery issues fixed plus a much-extended battery life for your iPhone. If you clear app cache iPhone, app cookies, junk files, and temporary files it will free up system recourse, and sometimes you will find it would fix many battery issues and improve the iPhone battery life.

How Do I Clear App Cache on My iPhone?

Because it is the default browser on iOS devices, Safari is one of the most commonly used browsers on iPhone. Because it stores information in the cache memory so that it may be accessed quickly, Safari, compared to other apps, has the most cached memory. Here are some easy steps on how to clear the cache on iPhone in the Safari browser.

First, go to Settings. Scroll down until you find the Safari app tab. In the new screen that shows Safari, tap Clear History and Website Data option. A pop-up will appear and again tap Clear History and Website Data to confirm. This will automatically log you out of any websites you are presently signed into, so make sure you know your passwords. This will clear the cache on your iPhone and remove cookies, history, and all other browsing data in Safari. Your Safari browser should be as good as new and with more storage space in your iPhone, you can expect a faster and more efficient browsing experience.

Free Up Memory by Restarting An iPhone or iPad

It is always best to take the necessary precautionary measure of turning your iPhone or iPad on and off before deleting memory-clogging files from your iOS device which by and large does an excellent job in managing memory with no external intervention from the user. It has been seen that restarting your iPhone or iPad occasionally from time to time is an effective way of clearing cache while ensuring that important apps have enough to perform satisfactorily.

How to restart your iPhone or iPad depends on the model and age of your iOS device. An iPhone or iPad with a Home Button will warrant one type of method, while an iPhone or iPad that uses Face ID and therefore does not have a Home button will need another different process. Below are the two different steps depending on the type of iPhone or iPad you have.

No Home Button:

1. Press the volume up, volume down, and power buttons.

2. Swipe to turn your iPhone off.
3. Once your iPhone shuts down, press and hold the power button until the

Apple logo appears, then wait for the device to reboot fully.

With some older models of iPhone, you may be able to hold down the power button and the volume up button simultaneously at the same time until the “slide to power off” option appears.

With Home Button:

1. On an iPhone or iPad with a Home button, hold down only the power

button until the slider appears.

2. Your iPhone or iPad will then power down.

3. Press the power button to restart the iOS device.

While restarting your iPhone or iPad regularly is healthy for your device, more advanced models have this process quite unnecessary these days. Nevertheless, it can still be useful on older models.

Restarting your iPhone is an excellent way to clear the cache on your iPhone or iPad and frees up more storage space for use by more important apps.

These are steps to restart your iPhone to clear the cache:

1. Hold down the Sleep/Wake button (on the top or at the top-right of the

device) until “slide to power off” appears.

2. Swipe the power off slider.

3. Wait until the device has fully powered down, then press and hold the

Sleep/Wake button to turn on the iPhone.

How to Close Apps to Free Up RAM?

Learning a trick or two on how to clear RAM on iPhone is something every iOS device user must know. It is not uncommon for the iPhone to occasionally become slow and sluggish, especially when using tasks that require intensive apps. There are times when your iPhone freezes completely. This usually happens to older phone models as their hardware is not particularly designed to handle more modern software and applications. However, this may also occur in the latest version of the iPhone.

A most common reason for your iPhone to stall and shut down is when your phone's Random Access Memory (RAM) becomes full. RAM is where the processor stores short-term data which is used to call on to run programs. The iPhone and the iPad only have a limited amount of RAM. So, when your iPhone is besieged by a flurry of activity and the RAM starts to reach its limit, the processor detects that it has limited storage space to store short-term data and everything begins to grind to a halt while the system tries to manage the backlog.

Here are some simple steps to close apps and free up your iPhone’s RAM:

How to Clear RAM on iPhone

For iPhones that do not have a physical Home button, you will need to enable Assistive Touch. If your phone does have a physical button, then no need to worry about this step.

1. Go to Settings, then tap Accessibility. Select Touch and then tap AssistiveTouch. At the top of the following page, press AssistiveTouch on.

A circular button will appear on the screen. Tap this button to view a menu of touch options. The Home button is the one we will be using later.

Next, you will have to enter the shutdown menu, but not the one you usually use.

2. Unlock your phone. In quick succession, press the volume up button, then press the volume down button, then hold the lock button until a shutdown menu appears.

Having followed the steps above now brings you to the troubleshooting shutdown menu which is used for force restarting, recovery, and DFU modes and RAM clearance. Note that this troubleshooting shutdown menu looks different from the normal shutdown menu you use to power off your phone; that menu features an SOS slider, while this more powerful troubleshooting shutdown menu does not, which is the best way to determine whether or not you’ve got everything down pat.

3. While on the shutdown menu, tap the AssistiveTouch button to bring up the menu. Next, long press the Home option. If you're on an iPhone with a physical button, simply hold down on that.

4. You will now be presented with a lock screen that tells you that you've done it right and have successfully cleared your RAM. Enter your passcode. Congratulations! Freezing fixed.

You may want to double-check and confirm if everything works as it should. To test, just swipe up and hold the center of the screen to open your App tray. Each app you open will restart when tapped and that means that your system memory and app cache have been cleared thereby giving your iPhone more storage space which in turn helps improve the iPhone battery life.

How Can I Delete Unwanted Apps?

Another logical thing to do to ensure ample iPhone storage space is to delete unwanted apps from your device. This greatly helps to clear the cache on iPhone.

1. Touch and hold the app.

2. Tap Remove App

3. Tap Delete App, then tap Delete to confirm.

An important point to remember is that some built-in Apple apps cannot be deleted from your iOS device, so possibly you may not see the option to delete an app. If you can't delete an app that's not made by Apple, simply disable parental controls and then try deleting the app again.

If you touch and hold an app from the Home Screen and the apps start to jiggle:

1. Tap the Remove icon in the upper-left corner of the app.

2. Tap Delete App, then tap Delete to confirm.

3. Tap Done.

iPhone Clear App Cache without Deleting App

A common way for iPhone clear the app cache without deleting the app is to uninstall the app entirely and then reinstall it.

Almost all the apps installed on your iOS device take up some storage space in addition to their download size. There is no option on your iOS device, iPhone or Ipad, to clear cache of an individual app other than Safari and you can only clean its memory space by uninstalling the app entirely from your device. Uninstalling an app from your iPhone deletes everything you have in that application, including the cache and preferences.

Here are the steps on how to delete cache on iPhone or iPad generated by the apps using the Usage option in Settings by deleting the major space-eating app and then reinstalling it:

1. Go to Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage.

2. In the top section (Storage), tap Manage Storage.

3. You will now see a list of all your apps, with the corresponding memory they each take. Select the app that takes up some storage on your iPhone. Reinstalling every app might take some time. The best thing to do is to check how much space is taken up by each app and reinstall only the biggest space-eating apps.

4. Check the entry for Documents & Data. Any app that takes up more than 500MB is worth deleting to clear your device space.

5. Tap Delete App, then proceed to the App Store to re-install it. This should be a clean install bereft of all the data and documents.

How to Clear App Cache on iPhone by Using a Third-party App

Uninstalling and reinstalling apps may be a breeze for your iPhone clear app cache without deleting the app. However, if this is required across a dozen apps, it certainly will take a long time. But worry not because luckily there is an efficient way to clear app cache iPhone and data on the device. This is where a third-party iOS app comes in handy.

There are quite a handful of apps available that can help you quickly get rid of unneeded or junk files on your iPhone. Normally, these apps are downloaded onto your Mac or PC, and then connected to your iPhone or iPad to clear caches on the devices. One powerful iOS cleaner app is PhoneClean by iMobie. This cleaner app is capable of eliminating 30 types of junk files including caches.

Here are the simple steps on how to clear app cache on iPhone with the help of PhoneClean to create ample iPhone storage space:

1. Attach the iPhone to your Mac or PC using the USB Cable.

2. Open PhoneClean and click Scan.

3. Once the scan is complete, click Clean.

Now that you know how to clear cache on iPhone is important to the overall health and lifespan of your iOS device, it is equally vital to regularly practice these maintenance methods to keep your iPhone in tip-top shape. Book an appointment with us today or check out our repair iPhone page for more information on how we can help.