How To Disable Browser Caches On M1 Mac? Chrome writes a lot of data on to my SSD when watching Youtube 4K videos.

[Phat^Trance]

I watch a lot of 4k video on youtube via google chrome, and just noticed that chrome writes A LOT of data to my M1 SSD disc. I previously disabled the chrome cache to disc by turning off the "Turn off caching of streaming media to disk” via by entering the setting via this command: chrome://flags/#turn-off-streaming-media-caching-always and that worked fine for a few months.

The only problem now is that the latest version of chrome doesnt have this feature anymore, so im not able to disable it again. And tyhats probably why chrome helper have been writing a lof of data on my SSD again (500-900gb / day).

Does anyone know any other way to disable the chrome browser caching on m1?

Im on Big Sur 11.5.1

 

[darngooddesign]

is using a pervious version of chrome an option for you?

 

[casperes1996]

I would recommend using Safari instead. AFAIK this 'feature' cannot be turned off at the moment. However, part of the behaviour also seems to be a bug - are you using the M1 native version of Chrome or the Intel version?

 

[Phat^Trance]

I would recommend using Safari instead. AFAIK this 'feature' cannot be turned off at the moment. However, part of the behaviour also seems to be a bug - are you using the M1 native version of Chrome or the Intel version?

Ive tried to use safari a few times, but i really cant stand it. So i keep switching back to Chrome.

Im using the M1 native version of chrome.

 

[Phat^Trance]

is using a pervious version of chrome an option for you?

Yeah, do you know which version that does support turning off caching to disk?

 

[southerndoc]

Like you, I can't change to Safari. I like the Chrome layout/experience better.

 

[mi7chy]

Try Microsoft Edge for M1. It's a Chrome based browser that doesn't appear to cache YouTube to storage.

Caching YouTube to either storage or RAM is likely an intentional design decision to avoid buffering. Safari uses more RAM for caching as I see a 1GB Safari process for YouTube that's worse for 8GB devices while Chrome method is better for low RAM devices but puts more wear on SSD and storage consumes a bit more power than RAM. Edge seems like a happy medium.