Is it safe to delete ~/Library/Caches on a Mac?

SAFE user-cache

Application caches, logs and incomplete downloads under ~/Library. Regenerated on demand.

What it is

Working files applications keep under ~/Library/Caches, plus their logs and the half-finished downloads they never cleaned up. None of it is a document you created.

What it is for

A cache buys speed: a browser keeps images, a mail client keeps message bodies, a package manager keeps archives it already downloaded. macOS never prunes these directories on your behalf, so they only grow.

Is it safe to delete?

Yes. Every application recreates what it needs, at the cost of being a little slower the first time. Broza moves the files to quarantine instead of deleting them, so a program that behaves oddly afterwards can be put back exactly as it was.

The exception Broza handles for you

A few directories under ~/Library/Caches hold data nothing regenerates: JetBrains' per-file undo history and Poetry's virtualenvs. Broza opens those up and lists only their regenerable contents, so every path under the SAFE label is one an application recreates.

Check it on your Mac

Broza is a free, open-source command-line tool. Every command below is read-only except clean, and clean is a dry run until you add --apply.

$ broza explain user-cache

$ broza suggest --category user-cache

$ broza clean --category user-cache

Not installed yet? Install Broza with Homebrew, the installer script, or Cargo.