What does your computer mean when it refers to the cache? If you look the word up in the dictionary, you might get a definition as being, “a hiding place in the ground, a place to store food, treasures or ammunition.” But in the computer world, the cache is a temporary storage space or memory that allows for quick access to certain web pages or web data.

Now cache is super important. It means you don’t have to wait forever to find your favorite websites, or get access to your favorite web stored. But with the good comes bad as well. Your computer keeps a history of every page you have visited online on that computer and a registry of the time you were there. This is standard to every modern computer system. And eventually it can lead to problems.

The browser holds your history indefinitely. This helps you go back to a forgotten part of the web that you once visited. But it also means that anyone else who has access to the computer can see the web pages you have looked at – and this can lead to outrage, blackmail or other reprisals.

Ok, so we know that you may not be doing anything wrong. You’re not a cybercriminal, right? Just a person who wants a little digital privacy and who wants to make sure his computer continues to run quickly. You know, that it doesn’t take a long time to load websites after a while. So what do you do? You delete the cache regularly – or you make sure the cache is never stored for long periods of time.

How to Remove The Web History (cache)

Here are the steps you need to remove the cache using the different web browsers.

Google Chrome

There is a three-dot menu at the top of the Chrome window. It is in the upper-right-hand corner. Click those three buttons and choose Settings, then Show Advanced Settings and then Clear Browsing Data. This takes you to the dialogue box that walks you through the delete process. This will also delete your download history (NOT YOUR DOWNLOADED FILES). It deletes the old cookies (data websites put on your computer in the background.

Unfortunately, despite all of Chrome’s benefits, there is no option to NOT collect browser history or to define how much it should hold. It just collects until you remember to go in and delete it.

Opera

Go to the main menu in Opera and go to Settings and Privacy and Security. Select the Clear browsing button and then follow the direction.

Microsoft Edge

Look for the three-dot menu in Microsoft Edge. Choose settings amd then choose what you want to clear and then follow the instructions. If you are unsure chooes to get rid of the browsing and the download history, the cookies, cached data and stored data.
Look for the three-dot menu again in Microsoft Edge and choose settings. In the fly-out menu click the button for Choose What to Clear and follow the instructions.

Safari

Click Clear History in the Safari main menu. Then in the popup choose the time frame and how far back you want to erase. You can also click History and take out sites individually.

Mozilla Firefox

Choose the three-dot menu at the top right-hand side. Go to history and choose Clear Recent History option.

If all else fails, get Ccleaner. Piriform has a free Ccleaner and it can delete all the junk on your computer from all browsers. It also works for Mac when you download the Mac version.