How To: Clear Google Chrome Cache

Google Chrome is the current browser “hotness.” Besides being THE operating system for Google’s Chromebooks, as of December 2014 W3Schools reports that it currently enjoys almost a 62% market share of the web browser market. It’s here, in a big way. There’s just one small issue with that market share; the platforms it’s designed to run on don’t always play nicely with it, or rather it doesn’t play nicely with Windows and Mac OSX as often as I would like.

Chrome likes to cache everything! Like a good web browser it saves images, files, and creates local caches of all the favorite places you like to browse on your hard drive. That’s a good thing! In fact, a web cache can dramatically increase your browsing speed. However, when a web cache becomes too large, it can slow down any browser, cause issues with crashing, and introduce other issues to the “user experience” (that’s a thing marketing people say, yes?). Normally you’d want to keep your browser cache intact, but there are times when you need to just be rid of it, and let it start anew. Sure, you can also perform a number of others techie/geeky tasks, but clearing your browser’s cache is usually the easiest of them. Some might suggest that you NEVER clear your browser’s cache, but I’ve found that Chrome is a unique beast, encouraging users to login to multiple Google Accounts, have 3 or more windows running with different local user accounts creating caches from possibly dozens of open websites.

You can check out my simple screencast for clearing your Google Chrome browser cache on YouTube or embedded below.

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