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Why can't we delete app cache in iOS?

Rogifan

Rogifan

macrumors Penryn
Original poster
Nov 14, 2011
24,862
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Right now Twitter takes up 782MB on my phone. Of that 661MB is Documents & Data that can only be deleted if I remove the app and reinstall it. Many games on my phone take up hundreds of MB with Documents & Data. Why isn't there a way to clear this cache to free up space? I'd rather have that than deleting unused apps. My guess is app cache takes up more space than little used apps.
 
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Excellent question - this is a bit annoying to not have at the 11th iteration of the OS.
 
Rogifan said:
Right now Twitter takes up 782MB on my phone. Of that 661MB is Documents & Data that can only be deleted if I remove the app and reinstall it. Many games on my phone take up hundreds of MB with Documents & Data. Why isn't there a way to clear this cache to free up space? I'd rather have that than deleting unused apps. My guess is app cache takes up more space than little used apps.
Click to expand...

I've been asking for this for a long time.

It's poor design.

A prior version of Periscope was an 80MB or so App that was taking up Gigs of space on my iPhone, resulting in the delete & reinstall loop you mention.

Thankfully they've since updated it at their end, so it's not as bad.

This remains a significant issue though overall.
 
Because regeneration of cache takes battery life. Plus, some of those caches are automagically cleared when the device is low on space. Heck, we at least can use the optimise storage features, and you can even offload apps in iOS 11.
 
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Plus you can force a cache flush in iOS by pressing and holding the power button until you see slide to power off then release power key and hold home button until returned to home screen your entire cache is now flushed.
 
IMG_1147.JPG
Rogifan said:
Right now Twitter takes up 782MB on my phone. Of that 661MB is Documents & Data that can only be deleted if I remove the app and reinstall it. Many games on my phone take up hundreds of MB with Documents & Data. Why isn't there a way to clear this cache to free up space? I'd rather have that than deleting unused apps. My guess is app cache takes up more space than little used apps.
Click to expand...

It may not be in iOS yet, but the Twitter app added this not too long ago. Go to Settings>Settings and privacy>Data usage and in the Storage section you can select Media Storage or Web storage and Clear media storage.
 
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asfalloth said:
Plus you can force a cache flush in iOS by pressing and holding the power button until you see slide to power off then release power key and hold home button until returned to home screen your entire cache is now flushed.
Click to expand...
That's not the same thing the OP was referring to. Two totally different things.
 
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Rogifan said:
Right now Twitter takes up 782MB on my phone. Of that 661MB is Documents & Data that can only be deleted if I remove the app and reinstall it. Many games on my phone take up hundreds of MB with Documents & Data. Why isn't there a way to clear this cache to free up space? I'd rather have that than deleting unused apps. My guess is app cache takes up more space than little used apps.
Click to expand...

Twitter has a cache deleting feature on iOS.
 
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Also submit feedback to the app developer. iOS allows developers to choose whether downloaded media is stored in persistent or temporary caches. Clearly, media downloaded when viewing tweets, for example, should be temporary.
 
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asfalloth said:
Plus you can force a cache flush in iOS by pressing and holding the power button until you see slide to power off then release power key and hold home button until returned to home screen your entire cache is now flushed.
Click to expand...
That clears the RAM I believe, not the cache.
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xtwentyseven said:
View attachment 702841

It may not be in iOS yet, but the Twitter app added this not too long ago. Go to Settings>Settings and privacy>Data usage and in the Storage section you can select Media Storage or Web storage and Clear media storage.
Click to expand...
That clears the web and media caches... I wonder if there are any hidden app caches present that are why Apple doesn't let us clear the caches.
 
If you try to download a big movie from the iTunes Store, iOS will automatically delete quite a lot of cache! Try it with Titanic or something as big.
 
Because iOS is supposed to be smart at managing cache for apps. It's supposed to clean up cache folders once in a while when space is needed, but I've never found it functional.

Cache improves performance for apps and the OS, but also greatly eats up storage that can be used for more useful things.

IMG_4016.JPG


Needless to say, Apple needs to implement something like this.
 
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asfalloth said:
Plus you can force a cache flush in iOS by pressing and holding the power button until you see slide to power off then release power key and hold home button until returned to home screen your entire cache is now flushed.
Click to expand...

whitch cache? hundreds of mb's of documents and data are still there after performing cleaning you mention. nothing changes...
 
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Mlrollin91 said:
There are a few apps on the App Store that do this. I don't know if they work in iOS 11, but they definitely do in iOS 10.3.2. Magic cleaner is one of them.
Click to expand...

But you actually want to see such a feature being build into iOS by Apple.
Also I've tried all of them I think but unfortunately they don't actually work for e.g. clearing the cache for e.g. the Facebook app. I've also seen cases where the app size even got bigger after clearing then before.

Some apps such as a few video apps (Infuse, nPlayer) or news apps (Newsify) do have a cache clearing feature mainly to delete offline video, music (CloudBeats Pro), news.
 
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