Even though Apple’s mobile hardware is best in class, it’s only inevitable that your iPhone will start to feel a bit more sluggish as the years pass by. With that said, there is a simple iPhone trick that can make your device feel a lot snappier within seconds.
Clearing the cache on your browser is something people do regularly on desktops, but not as often on their mobile devices. Still, clearing the cache on your iPhone can be just as effective. Put simply, clearing the cache on mobile Safari will remove useless files — such as images and scripts — that have piled up over the years. In turn, you’ll likely notice some speed and performance improvements when you clear out the Safari cache.
How to clear the cache on mobile Safari
Given that most iOS users primarily use mobile Safari, we’ll start there. If you’re iPhone seems a bit sluggish, clearing the cache on mobile Safari is relatively straightforward.
First, open up the Settings app. Scroll down a bit until you see the listing for Safari. Select that and scroll nearly to the bottom. You should see an option, listed in a blue font, that reads “Clear History and Website Data.”
Be warned that this will erase your entire browser history including any saved passwords.
Once you tap that, you’ll see a warning prompt asking if you really want to clear out your browser history, cookies, and other browsing data. If you select yes, your browser history will essentially begin anew.
Now if you’d like to delete your cookies but maintain your browser history, go to Settings > Safari > Advanced > Website Data, and then tap Remove All Website Data.
This iPhone trick works across all browsers
Naturally, Firefox and Chrome users can implement the same trick. If you have Chrome, and you may want to switch given the aesthetic of mobile Safari in iOS 15, deleting the cache in Chrome is just as easy.
First, open up Chrome and tap on the three horizontal dots at the bottom of the screen. Select the “settings” option at the bottom. Now, hit “Privacy” and then “Clear Browsing Data.” You can now select if you want to delete your browser history, cookies and site data, and cached images and files. Additionally, if you look at the top, you can also specify a specific time range. In other words, you can choose to delete the above browsing data that was generated over the last hour, 24 hours, last 7 days, last 4 weeks, or for all time.
Incidentally, you can also delete the last 15 minutes of your search history on Chrome by using Google’s new Quick Delete feature.
