Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

can't clear cache

  • 5 replies
  • 87 have this problem
  • 18 views
  • Last reply by user700204

user700204
user700204
more options

OK, I can't clear my Firefox (45.0, Mac 10.11) cache. Well, it's really hard ...

I go to Preferences/Advanced/Network, where I'm presented with a "Clear Now" button. Looks good! I hit that and my cache (listed as 303MB) drops to 299MB. I hit it again, and it drops to 287MB. I hit it again, again and again and each time it drops a little bit. This is NUTS! I want one button hit to drop it to ZERO. I don't want to have to hit that stupid button fifty times to clear my cache. What's going on???? This happens EVERY TIME I want to clear my cache.

BTW, I use FF41 on a Win7 machine and "Clear Now" does exactly that.

OK, I can't clear my Firefox (45.0, Mac 10.11) cache. Well, it's really hard ... I go to Preferences/Advanced/Network, where I'm presented with a "Clear Now" button. Looks good! I hit that and my cache (listed as 303MB) drops to 299MB. I hit it again, and it drops to 287MB. I hit it again, again and again and each time it drops a little bit. This is NUTS! I want one button hit to drop it to ZERO. I don't want to have to hit that stupid button fifty times to clear my cache. What's going on???? This happens EVERY TIME I want to clear my cache. BTW, I use FF41 on a Win7 machine and "Clear Now" does exactly that.

Chosen solution

Well, for a completely different reason I did a run of MalwareBytes on my machine. Nice utility! Now everything seems to work. Though I seem to have to click "Clear Now" twice to make it happen. So I have to assume that this problem was because of some malware on the system. Aaargh!

But your other diagnostic strategies are helpful. Thanks!

Read this answer in context 👍 1

All Replies (5)

user700204
user700204 Question owner
more options

I should add that I'm talking about "Cached Web Content". Not the Application Cache.

Fahim
Fahim
more options

Hello

  1. Click the menu button and choose Preferences.
  2. Select the Advanced panel.
  3. Click on the Network tab.
  4. In the Cached Web Content section, click Clear Now.
  5. Close the about:preferences page. Any changes you've made will automatically be saved.

For details follow this - How to clear the Firefox cache

user700204
user700204 Question owner
more options

Thanks, but you have to read more than my title. I specifically said that this was *exactly* what I did, and it didn't work.

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

Maybe that page is not updating properly. If you close the Preferences page and re-open it again does it recalculate to a lower figure?

It's also possible that disk space was not yielded back to the OS right away. To see how many items are stored in cache, you could try another page. Type or paste about:cache in the address bar and press Enter or Return to load it. The disk category is the most interesting usually. Does it still show a large number of entries or has that come down near zero?

user700204
user700204 Question owner
more options

Chosen Solution

Well, for a completely different reason I did a run of MalwareBytes on my machine. Nice utility! Now everything seems to work. Though I seem to have to click "Clear Now" twice to make it happen. So I have to assume that this problem was because of some malware on the system. Aaargh!

But your other diagnostic strategies are helpful. Thanks!