Is It Safe to Clear the Safari Cache on Your Mac?

Yes, it's safe to deleteDiskmack safety tier: Safe to clean

~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari

Yes, Safari's cache is safe to delete. It holds copies of images, scripts, and other page assets that Safari saves so sites load faster the next time you visit. Clearing it costs you nothing permanent: no bookmarks, no passwords, no history, no logins. Pages just load a little slower on your first return visit while Safari downloads everything fresh.

What it is

The folder at ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari is Safari's browser cache. Every time you visit a site, Safari keeps local copies of pieces of it: images, stylesheets, JavaScript files, fonts. On your next visit it reads those from disk instead of downloading them again, which is why familiar sites feel faster than new ones. That is the folder's entire job. It is a convenience layer, not a data store, and everything in it can be fetched again from the web.

How big it gets depends on how you browse. Light use keeps it modest, often well under a gigabyte. Heavy browsing, media-rich sites, and years without a cleanup can push the total into the multiple gigabyte range. One wrinkle: on recent versions of macOS, Safari is sandboxed and also keeps cache data inside its container at ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Safari, so the folder you can see in ~/Library/Caches may not be the full picture. The in-app method below clears the cache wherever Safari keeps it.

Is it safe to delete?

This is a safe-tier folder. Nothing in it is original data. Your bookmarks, saved passwords, history, and open tabs live elsewhere and are not touched when the cache goes. The worst case after clearing is that sites load a bit slower on the next visit while Safari re-downloads the assets it threw away, and that slowdown fades within a day or two of normal browsing.

There are two honest reasons to clear it: reclaiming disk space, and fixing a site that renders wrong or behaves oddly because of a stale cached file. Both are legitimate. One caveat: if you delete the folder by hand, quit Safari first, or better, use Safari's own Empty Caches command so the app stays in a consistent state. Diskmack identifies this folder automatically and cleans it the safe way.

How to check its size

In Finder: In Finder, choose Go > Go to Folder (Shift+Command+G), enter ~/Library/Caches and press Return. Select the com.apple.Safari folder and press Command+I to see its size.

In Terminal:

du -sh ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari

How to clean it

Open Safari and choose Safari > Settings from the menu bar, then click the Advanced tab.
Turn on the checkbox at the bottom that enables the Develop menu (labeled "Show features for web developers" on recent versions, "Show Develop menu in menu bar" on older ones).
In the menu bar, choose Develop > Empty Caches, or press Option+Command+E. This clears Safari's cache everywhere it is stored, including the sandboxed container.
If a specific site is still misbehaving, go to Safari > Settings > Privacy > Manage Website Data, search for that site, and remove just its entry.
Prefer to do it by hand instead? Quit Safari, press Shift+Command+G in Finder, go to ~/Library/Caches, and drag the com.apple.Safari folder to the Trash. Safari recreates it on next launch.

Manage Website Data removes cookies along with cached files, so wiping everything there signs you out of most sites. Develop > Empty Caches on its own does not touch logins.

Will it come back?

Yes, immediately and by design. Safari starts rebuilding the cache with the first page you load after clearing it, and within a few days of normal browsing it settles back to a size that reflects your habits. That is fine. A cache that regrows is doing its job, and clearing it is a repeatable cleanup, not a one-time fix. If it balloons quickly, the cause is usually media-heavy sites you visit often, not a fault in Safari.

Common questions

Will clearing the Safari cache delete my passwords or bookmarks?

No. Passwords live in iCloud Keychain or your local keychain, and bookmarks are stored separately in your Safari profile. The cache only holds re-downloadable copies of page assets like images and scripts.

Will I get signed out of websites?

Not if you only empty the cache. Logins are held in cookies, which are stored separately. You will get signed out of a site if you remove its entry under Settings > Privacy > Manage Website Data, because that clears its cookies too.

Why does the folder look small when Safari is clearly using more space?

On modern macOS, Safari is sandboxed, so much of its cache lives inside its container at ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Safari rather than in ~/Library/Caches. The Develop > Empty Caches command clears the cache in both places.

Terminal says "Operation not permitted" when I run du. What now?

macOS protects some of Safari's folders from other apps. Give Terminal Full Disk Access under System Settings > Privacy & Security > Full Disk Access and run the command again, or skip Terminal and check the size in Finder with Command+I.