Does someone keep telling you to “clear your browser cache”? What does clearing your browser cache mean, and how do you clear the cache for your specific browser?

Let’s find out!

What’s a Browser Cache?

A browser cache is a database of files used to store downloaded resources from websites. Common resources in a browser cache include images, text content, HTML, CSS, and Javascript. The browser cache is relatively small compared to the many other types of databases used for websites.

Check Out this Video Guide to Clearing Cache

A cache, in general, is software or hardware that temporarily captures and stores data for the user to access that data in the future rapidly.

There are several types of caching, like browser caching, distributed server caching for high volume systems, application caching to log website HTML, data caching for content management systems, gateway caching, proxy caching, and many other kinds.

So, as a subset of general caching, browser caching:

• Is a software element stored on whatever browser you use to peruse the internet.
• Uses a small database, much smaller in size than server or standard website cache systems.
• Takes downloaded data (no longer online, but in a local, client-side environment) from websites you visit. In short, it stores the data on your computer.
• Stores website resources such as coding files, media assets, and personalized site preferences.
• Uses the stored website resources to deliver them faster in the future.
• Utilizes that data to provide a more desirable user experience.

Simply put, a browser cache takes elements from the websites you visit and saves them in a database, resulting in faster page load times (especially with a slow or missing internet connection) and a more robust user experience the next time you go to a website you’ve been to before.

Notice that we didn’t only mention page load times as the primary benefit. The user experience is just as necessary. For instance, the browser cache saves user site preferences like color schemes, which may make a website easier to read.

How a Browser Cache Works

Here’s a more technical look at how a browser cache functions: