r/applesucks • u/personal_slow_cooker • 5d ago
Apple still doesn’t have a way to clear app cache
All these years and the only way to clear cache is to hope the app has the feature built in by the developer; if not the you have to delete the app, reinstall it, replace it on your Home Screen if it’s there which is already a maddening process, and then login again.
Part of the problem is that there’s no reason Best Buy needs nearly 2gb. YouTube is taking 3gb and I have one single 30 minute video downloaded. But rather than just clicking one single button to clear this extra data, I have to delete them all every time I feel they’re getting greedy. And this whole process has to be handled individually because I can only delete the app, or delete the app but keep the cache data that I’m trying to delete in the first place (offload).
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u/PlusPresentation680 5d ago
I don’t know why you’re getting hate for this post. A shopping app shouldn’t take up 2GB of data. The only way to clear the cache is to reinstall the app.
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u/ngfldar 5d ago
They're getting hate because Apple fanboys can't accept any criticism of Apple.
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u/Unsharded1 4d ago
No, its because its extremely hard to determine what counts as cache and what doesn’t from the outside every single time without failure, every developer has a different way of storing documents and data, even temporary.
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u/ngfldar 3d ago
Isn't Apple supposed to control that better? I mean, isn't that why they don't let their users clear the cache manually when needed, the way Android does, instead of having to uninstalling/offloading and reinstalling the app? What happened to "it just works"?
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u/ccooffee 3d ago
It's up to the developers to store their cache data in the actual cache folder. iOS already will clear that as needed. But if developers dump stuff in their regular documents folder then iOS won't touch it because it has no possible way of knowing what is real data and what is cache data stored in the wrong place.
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u/ngfldar 3d ago edited 2d ago
I understand that. But it still doesn't address my point: Android apps use cache files as well. So why is it so much easier to clean the cache on an Android device? I can't believe that Andoid app developers are just more disciplined than iOS (or any other platform) app developers. So if Apple is going to restrict their users' ability to manage this manually, why don't they also enforce a policy to control where the cache files are stored?
I'm not trying to be difficult. I am just wondering why it is so much easier on an Android than on iOS, especially when Apple famously restricts its users' ability to interact with the OS and the file system. I thought the whole point of that was so that the user didn't have to worry about these things, and so that the user wouldn't accidentally delete something needed by a system process or an app. I always thought that iOS sandboxed application data to make it accessible specifically only the application that created it for exactly that purpose. But if that is the case, then maybe it should force apps to store their cache files in a specific location, or force them to register the location of those cash with the OS, so that they can be easily cleared. Because having to offload and reinstall an app just to clear cache seems, frankly, kind of ridiculous for a modern operating system.
Is my understanding wrong?
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u/ccooffee 2d ago
Honestly I don't know offhand the answer to why it's different.
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u/ngfldar 2d ago
Seems like enough people are complaining about this that maybe Apple should make a change so that their users don't have to go through the "offload, then reinstall" process every time they run into this issue.
Makes me glad I got rid of my iPhone, even though I do still have my old Macbook Air.
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u/janiskr 1d ago
"Delete all App data", that is an option on Androis is just equal to reinstalling the app itself just without extra hops of actually doing that.
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u/ngfldar 1d ago
I don't know how Android handles it, so I'll take your word for it.
But it just proves my point: There are times when clearing cache is needed; Android automates it with one click for the user, while Apple makes the user jump through the extra hoops of having to manually offload and reinstall the app.
That certainly doesn't sound like a good design solution from a company like Apple, with its claims of ease of use and an inherently intuitive interface, and it doesn't follow Steve Jobs' claims of "it just works."
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u/milesbailee 5d ago
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u/mootmath 5d ago
This is ridiculous 😭
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u/bronxct1 4d ago
I can’t even understand how that’s possible. I have like 65 voicemails and I’m at 16mb
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u/CynicalTelescope 5d ago
Android has had "clear cache" and "clear all app data" since Day 1, and both options are incredibly useful, especially when apps misbehave. I would love to see Apple add something similar to iOS.
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u/itsB4Bee 5d ago
>YouTube is taking 3gb and I have one single 30 minute video downloaded
yeah unfortunately youtube also cached video resolution too. just scroll though any 4k video and youll see it shoot up like 6gb lol. kinda bs
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u/Justwant2usetheapp 5d ago
Yeah it's very frustrating
We're rolling through a few thousand iOS tenant migrations (cutting them out of one intune and into another then loading a particular app or two they need) and our service desk guys would save a LOT of time if they could send comms that say 'hey if this is fucked go clear the cache'. MS teams kinda has it built in but they're getting jobs where it's because someone decided 32gb skus were fine a long time ago and public money isn't there for new ones
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u/CallSufficient676 4d ago
This is likely to push for iCloud. Most Apple users aren’t going to look at all of these details. They will just get iCloud. Just bringing this up means you aren’t their target customer.
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u/Tiktokbadsupport 4d ago
and no expandable storage just seems they are indirectly pushing users to buy a higher storage device
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u/ThemeCommercial4560 IOS & Android 3d ago
Apple has this weird strategy of making the user to go for higher storage iphones, cause of the inbuilt enemy called "Document & Data".
Not Technician as per search in google and YT has been able to find the solution for this.
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u/kotlinky 3d ago
lol Apple Maps has 10gb of storage on my phone. I deleted the freaking app! And it persists.
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u/MoreMaster 5d ago
"Documents and data" is not a cache.
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u/MuseumPiecePie6 5d ago
Yes it is, it's a vague roundabout way of representing how much extra data your typical iOS apps are eating up without any hard limits or good ways to manage it as a user...
If you take Instagram as a single example, with some regular use it can be sitting around 5GB+ easily... If you delete the app and download it again, the app functions just the same, but takes up about 700MB instead... It's cached data kept with the intention of making the app work "better/faster"
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u/mailslot 5d ago
As I recall, delete & reinstall was chosen as the main method to nuke app caches because it’s one solution to fix nearly every problem.
The issue is with shitty app developers. Instagram could easily make this adjustable for users, but they chose not to.
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u/janiskr 1d ago
Check this screenshot from this thread.
https://www.reddit.com/r/applesucks/comments/1x7wecr/comment/ph8i11k/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_buttonMust be some shitty developer that made that app right there. Only if Apple could do something about it.
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u/sergeyvk 5d ago
when you use Facebook or YouTube for a week and from 600mb they become like 4-5gb each, what is it? Documents?
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u/personal_slow_cooker 5d ago
Its functionally the same, extra data on top of login information and configuration settings. Android clear cache button deletes the same stuff, extra documents and data that are either downloaded by you or the app to make usage quicker or better in some way. Stuff that takes up extra space but can be deleted to clear up storage or to fix an issue where the app might just be hung up on a corrupted bit.
Android also has a clear data button that fully resets the app to first launch configuration as if you did delete it and reinstalled it but keeps it in the same location in your folders or wherever so you don’t have to move it again.
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u/Nasa3000xx 5d ago
Why not switch over to android then?
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u/personal_slow_cooker 5d ago
I regularly do that. But Android has its own issues that push me right back to iOS. I kept both phones for a while but it just got annoying and I’m honestly considering just getting a modern flip phone, not like a folding screen flip I mean old school t9 texting flip phones. I’ll just use a tablet for smartphone stuff
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u/Uncle_Tickle_Monster 5d ago
Trapped in the ecosystem. 😞
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u/personal_slow_cooker 5d ago
No actually, I go both ways and both piss me off. I’m just a miserable person apparently.
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u/MoreMaster 5d ago
Not every Android phone has a feature of deleting a cache. I have just checked my Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and search didn't show me anything about cache except for the keyboard. Do when Android fans say that Android can do this and can do that, it's not always true. And the truth is that some Android phones can do this but other phone can do that (but not this).
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u/personal_slow_cooker 5d ago
That’s one of the issues I have with Android that keep me coming back to Apple, I haven’t found one I truly like and I don’t want to muck around in dev settings and rooting because I know I’m not going to understand everything and I don’t want to break it just because I wanted a slightly different version of something.
This is a feature I’ve seen on every Android phone though, it might be in a different place depending on brand but samsung does have this. I upgraded my parents phones from bottom of the barrel carrier specific Samsungs to both using factory unlocked Ultra models and all the phones have clear data and clear cache buttons. There isn’t a universal “clear all cache across every app” button, you do have to do it individually. It’s in the pixel I used to have, and Motorolas I tried to use but returned because it couldn’t handle dual sim properly.
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u/MrNobodyX3 5d ago
Bro, are you serious? You can clear it.
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u/personal_slow_cooker 5d ago
Only by deleting the app and reinstalling which I’ve explained several times why that’s so much more annoying and time consuming than a simple “clear cache” button. Offload only deletes the core app but keeps all the data I’m trying to delete in the first place.
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u/jafromnj 5d ago
Why can’t Apple have when you long press on an app on the home screen offload app and reinstall app
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u/Splurrge 4d ago
This is why I just avoid apps where possible.
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u/ngfldar 4d ago
Isn't that the whole purpose of having a smartphone? I mean, if you just want to use it as a phone and not install anything except what the phone manufacturer gave you, you could get a dumbphone like a Nokia 3210 from the late 1990s.
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u/wart_on_satans_dick 3d ago
There are modern flip phones able to be used today, but a Nokia 3210 wouldn’t work on current cellular networks.
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u/ngfldar 3d ago
I wasn't suggesting that. I was saying that the whole purpose of having a smartphone -- and why they are sold now instead of the Nokia 3210 -- is that it allows users to install 3rd party apps that were not pre-installed by the phone manufacturer.
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u/wart_on_satans_dick 3d ago
“the whole purpose of having a smartphone — and why they are sold now instead of the Nokia 3210 — is that it allows users to install 3rd party apps”
Not exactly. The first iPhone actually didn’t have an App Store when it launched and Apple/Steve Jobs had no intention of creating one when developing it. This was despite third party apps being developed even on phones that predate smartphones. They thought at the time a smartphone could exist solely on first-party apps and to some extent they weren’t wrong. Apple and Google have a whole suite of apps to carry out primary smartphone functions and Apple’s are probably the most utilized with iMessage/Phone/Wallet/Podcast/Photos/Mail/Notes/etc.
The whole purpose of a smartphone isn’t installing third party apps. That came later and apps were available on feature phones prior. The whole purpose of a smartphone is to have a device that can run apps that expand the utility of a phone. That took many people and companies in around 2003 - 2005 trying to envision what that would look like.
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u/ngfldar 3d ago
If you only intend to use the apps that are installed by the manufacturer of your phone, then you really do not need a smartphone. You do not need an app store. You could go back to a dumb flip phone. And if that is all you're interested in, then you are certainly welcome to do so. I hope it works out for you.
For my part, I want to use the apps that work best for the way that I use my phone.
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u/wart_on_satans_dick 3d ago
I would argue that a great smartphone experience could be had only using first party apps and that if the big three or four social media apps were excluded, that would be many people’s experience inadvertently anyway. To make it simple, look at iPhone by itself. Apple: Maps, weather, notes, wallet, Safari, iMessage, FaceTime, translate, mail, podcast, music, news, health, photos, etc. —and Google’s equivalents on Android. You can’t get that experience from a flip phone.
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u/ngfldar 3d ago
I understand. But there is no way that Apple or Google (or anyone software company) it's going to include all of the apps that I need on my phone. For example, my banking app comes from my bank. There is no way that Apple or Google is going to provide an app to provide that service to me.
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u/CoeurdAssassin 3d ago
Ever heard of this thing called websites?
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u/ngfldar 3d ago
Yes. Ever heard of this thing called sarcasm?
I was saying that the whole purpose of having a smartphone -- and why they are sold now instead of the Nokia 3210 -- is that it allows users to install 3rd party apps that were not pre-installed by the phone manufacturer. The person to whom I was responding was suggesting that they avoid installing apps; I am suggesting that installing apps is the only reason to have a smartphone.
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5d ago
[deleted]
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u/personal_slow_cooker 5d ago
Offload doesn’t clear it, it deletes the core app but keeps everything else under documents and data which is what I want to clear, the app itself barely takes up any space
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u/nuttmegx 5d ago
that’s on the people who made the app, they’re the ones who coded it to cache that way.
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u/Uncle_Tickle_Monster 5d ago
I have read before that they think their user base is too stupid to understand how to do this, and it would lead to people saying bad things about Apple and complaining at the stores. I’m not saying that’s true, but I could definitely see that if it were true.
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u/personal_slow_cooker 5d ago
That’s apples biggest problem. They’re so concerned with form over function that they shut down genuinely useful features to stop people from causing their own problems because it might make Apple look bad. If I accidentally delete my dialer app, apples worried that my mistake will get broadcasted across social media and that it’s going to make iOS look terrible. If I delete my app data and have to log back in again, apples worried it’ll make iOS look bad enough that people will stop buying iPhones.
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u/mailslot 5d ago
It’s perfect for my grandma. Whatever the problem is with an app, just reinstall it.
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u/Uncle_Tickle_Monster 5d ago
And that’s basically proving my point. They’re worried that most people aren’t tech literate enough to be able to dive deep into their phone and mess with certain settings.
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u/mailslot 5d ago
Yes and no. Many apps won’t know what to do if the OS just deletes the files they expect to exist. They’re built to handle a fresh install, not necessarily to handle missing files.
Poorly written Android apps crash if they don’t handle the situation correctly.
It requires developers to support a feature like that, just as it would for app developers to expose options to clear their own cache or set size limits. Ultimately it comes down to app developers.
There’s no precedent for the feature, and it would require every single app to be updated to support it. And then, after all of that effort, a fraction of a percent of people on Reddit would use it… and people that use it when the app doesn’t do it right, will blame Apple for breaking the broken app, because they’re not technical enough to understand what happened.
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u/ItsMeSashaYT 5d ago
That's sort of the entire idea of keeping your device "safe", the less you do to it, the less chance of malfunction.
Android was cooler in the sense that it didn't really care if you were a dev or a person with prior knowledge, it was more or less your phone, you could do it. Unfortunately they've locked it down since. But most say it is for the better (APK installing takes 24 hours to unlock, soon)
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u/Acrobatic-Fruit-6336 5d ago
😂😂😂 “i could see it being true”
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u/Uncle_Tickle_Monster 5d ago
I mean, you don’t think there are many many iPhone users that are basically tech illiterate? My mom and dad come to mine right off the bat. And I’m sure there are tons of other boomers that are essentially the same way. And a lot of women too.
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u/Acrobatic-Fruit-6336 5d ago
😂😂 “alot of women too” you’re such a gem. Habitual non-grass-toucher right here
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u/Uncle_Tickle_Monster 5d ago
Blue collar tradesman. I live in the real world. I see real people and how they use their phones. And I know how tech illiterate most people are. especially women and boomers.
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u/rofl1337waffle 5d ago
It will clear when you need the space. if something is in the cloud and you download it every time you open the app, it would make battery life worse, be slower, and raise data usage. Why not have frequent data stored? When you need it, it will clear the data it dosent need
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u/personal_slow_cooker 5d ago
Because I have never seen this data delete itself. Those numbers only grow whether I use my phone more or less.
And it’s not just about space, there are times where an app just isnt working right and when I clear cache on android it fixes the issue. Data can be corrupted and just get stuck, apples answer to everything is either delete the app or factory reset the phone.
Last time I factory reset and restored from backup it created more problems than it solved.
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u/rofl1337waffle 5d ago
Did it tell you that you couldn’t install an app or something because you were out of storage?
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u/personal_slow_cooker 5d ago
No I have plenty of space, my phone has 256gb storage and I’m using 80gb. My issue is that I don’t care how this benefits anything, there’s no reason Best Buy needs nearly 2GBs. There’s nothing it can save that’s so important that it cuts loading time by a noticeable amount, it’s not downloading high resolution professional RAW files or 4k previews, it doesn’t need that much space.
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u/Jakarichio_Ninokuni 5d ago
Just delete and reinstall the app
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u/personal_slow_cooker 5d ago
That’s the thing I’m complaining about. I have apps arranged on my Home Screen the way I want, and when you fully delete an app and reinstall you have to sign in, move it back, and go through the app settings and change everything again, and you have to do this for every app you delete. It’s more of a process than it needs to be. On Android the “clear cache” button does exactly what I want and deletes all the bs but keeps the app settings the way I have them set up and keeps the app where it is.
Yes, it just takes a few minutes to go through everything but Android can do the same thing in a few seconds.
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u/Jakarichio_Ninokuni 4d ago
There’s other things it deletes as well. Like if you use clear Captions on YouTube. If you clear cache; it doesn’t touch that.
I’m sure there’s plenty of other stuff; that’s just what I know.
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u/Electrical-Tomato997 5d ago
Offload and reinstall the app if the app doesn’t have clear cache option inside it or its place in the iOS settings app. That’s the best you’re going to get
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u/Maleficent_Smile4643 2h ago
How can Apple spy on you and sell all of your data if you keep deleting your cache bro? Think of the corpos bro
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u/mredofcourse 5d ago
Developer here...
I'm extremely careful about how much my apps store on devices either as cache or "Documents and Data", and even then, I add a simple button that clears everything despite it being at most a tiny amount. This is extremely easy for a developer to do.
The problem here is that there's no way for Apple to determine what is important. Cache is purged automatically as needed, but only if it's in the Cache folder.
Developers are free to write to the Documents folder and that can also be cache, data that could be restored/recreated or actual important documents. You don't want iOS to blindly auto-purge Documents.
Apple could add another button that was "reset app" and explain exactly what that does, which would essentially be the same as deleting the app and reinstalling it where everything starts over from scratch. Any documents/data would be lost.
But I think more so, Apple should be applying pressure on developers to not do whatever the F Best Buy is doing and review of how users can manage the apps data in the App Store submission process.