How to clear app caches on Mac (Slack, Discord, VS Code & more)

If you want to clear app caches on Mac, the apps worth checking first are the chat and Electron ones: Slack, Discord, Microsoft Teams, VS Code, Spotify. They quietly hoard cache measured in gigabytes, and almost all of it is safe to clear. The trick is knowing which folder to empty. Clear the disposable Cache subfolder, not the whole app-support folder next to it that holds your real data.

Why chat and Electron apps hoard cache

Slack, Discord, Teams, VS Code and Spotify have something in common under the hood: they're web apps in a native wrapper (most are built on Electron, which bundles a full Chromium browser engine). That means each one caches the same things a browser does: images, avatars, custom emoji, GIFs, link previews, uploaded files, downloaded web content, plus compiled code and rendered assets.

Two habits make it pile up. First, they cache aggressively, because re-fetching every avatar and image over the network would make the app feel slow. Second, they rarely prune what they've cached: old workspaces, servers you left, channels you never open. Nothing clears it, so it only grows. Multi-GB is common; a single heavy chat app or editor can reach a few gigabytes on its own, and it's realistic to have several of them doing it at once.

For the general theory of what a cache is, whether clearing one speeds up your Mac (it doesn't, durably), and which system caches to leave alone, see is it safe to delete cache on Mac. This guide is the app-specific version: where these particular apps hide their cache, and how to empty it without losing anything.

Where app caches live on a Mac

There are two main patterns. Both live inside your hidden ~/Library folder.

• ~/Library/Application Support/<App>/…Cache…: Electron apps keep their cache in named subfolders here, alongside their real data. Look for subfolders with "Cache" in the name: Cache, Code Cache, GPUCache, Service Worker/CacheStorage, CachedData.
• ~/Library/Caches/<bundle id>: the classic per-app cache location, keyed by reverse-domain bundle ID (for example ~/Library/Caches/com.spotify.client).

Some apps use one, some use both. Here's where the common offenders tend to keep it:

Treat these as a starting map, not gospel. The exact subfolder names move around between app versions. Teams in particular has changed where it stores data across releases, and VS Code spreads cache across several folders. So open the app's folder and verify the exact "Cache" subfolder before you delete anything. If it clearly says Cache in the name, it's disposable. If it doesn't, leave it.

How to clear app caches on a Mac safely

The GUI way, one app at a time:

1. Quit the app completely. Press Cmd+Q, and check it's not still running in the menu bar or Dock. Clearing a running app's cache can confuse it or corrupt state.

2. Open the app's folder. ~/Library is hidden. In Finder, open the Go menu, hold the Option key, and Library appears. Open it, then Application Support (or Caches). Or from Terminal:

open ~/Library/Application\ Support/Slack

3. Empty the Cache subfolder, not the folder above it. Find the subfolder clearly labeled Cache (or Code Cache, GPUCache), open it, and delete the contents inside it. Leave the subfolder itself in place; some apps expect it to exist. Do not drag the whole Application Support/Slack folder to the Trash. That's where the app also keeps real state.

4. Relaunch. The app rebuilds its cache as you use it. The only immediate cost is a slightly slower first load and images re-downloading once.

That's the whole job. Repeat for each heavy app.

The honest caveats

Two things the one-click cleaners gloss over.

• Not everything in an app's folder is disposable. ~/Library/Application Support/<App>/ also holds settings, your signed-in session, drafts, workspace state, and in some cases local message history. It's often the single largest thing an app leaves on disk, and deleting the wrong part means losing data the app can't rebuild. Only ever clear the subfolders that are clearly labeled Cache. When in doubt, don't. (VS Code is a good example: its per-extension globalStorage can be large, but some of it is real state, not cache.)
• The gains are temporary. A cache exists to make the app fast, so clearing it just means the app rebuilds it the next time you use it. This is a way to reclaim space from apps you barely touch, not a recurring performance ritual. For the fuller "what's actually safe to remove" rundown, see what you can safely delete on Mac, and for why all this cache is part of your Mac's invisible storage, see hidden storage on Mac.

Optional: find the big ones from Terminal

If you'd rather see which apps are worst before you start, list the biggest cache folders, largest first:

du -sh ~/Library/Application\ Support/*/ 2>/dev/null | sort -rh | head
du -sh ~/Library/Caches/* 2>/dev/null | sort -rh | head

The top few lines are usually your chat apps and editors. Target those; ignore the long tail of tiny folders.

Doing this by hand means unhiding ~/Library, telling a real Cache folder apart from the app-support data sitting right next to it, and quitting each app before you touch it, per app, every time. Plumby finds the apps that are actually hoarding cache, shows you the exact path for each before it moves anything, and clears only the disposable parts, so your settings and message history stay put. Everything it removes can go to the Trash rather than be deleted, and when a cache is just going to rebuild on next launch, it tells you, so the number it reports is real.