If you’ve been using CCleaner you’ve probably wondered what “Miscellaneous Caches” are. Well wonder no more, the answer is quite simple.
The CCleaner software is used to delete unwanted junk from your computer in order to free up space. Some people believe that cleaning up the junk on their computer also speeds up the machine but in reality that only happens if you’re right on the verge of running out of space entirely and your computer has no place to store something called a “swap file”. If you have plenty of space then using CCleaner can instead cause performance slowdowns as your computer is forced to re-download and re-create and re-index all those temp files you’ve just deleted.
Most options in CCleaner are straightforward but there is one option right at the bottom that comes with no explanation but offers to delete sometimes gigabytes of data! So what exactly does it do?
Well to put it simply: it does exactly what is says it does. It does a scan of your computer system and finds “caches” and then deletes them. Software programs create “caches” of data in order to store temporary information about your use of their programs. What can happen is a gradual buildup of these caches as programs keep creating new caches while not deleting the old ones. Soon enough you have thousands and thousands of unnecessary files on your hard drive taking up space.
So is it safe to include Miscellaneous Caches in your CCleaner routine? Probably. Not only has the CCleaner development team vetted carefully what files its product deletes but you can see for yourself what is going to be deleted by double-clicking on “Miscellaneous – Caches” after you run an analysis. Most of the files appear to be from the “/Library/Caches” section of your hard drive.
Now be aware that programs on your computer are creating these files for a reason. By deleting them you may cause slower performance or even weird behaviour. So your best bet is not to delete them unless you absolutely need the space.