What is cache?
If you've ever tried to troubleshoot your computer or needed to clear your browsing history, you've probably been prompted to clear your cache.
Benefits of caching
From a user point of view, there are three benefits of caches.
- They make everything run faster. The most important benefit of caching is that it improves system performance. For example, by storing local copies of website files, your browser only needs to download this information the first time you visit the site and can load the local files on subsequent visits.
- They store data. To help improve performance, apps store recent and frequently used data in the cache. Not only does this allow everything to run faster as previously mentioned, but in some cases it can allow apps to work "offline". For example, if you don't have internet access, an app can rely on cached data to continue working even without a connection.
- They save data for later use. There is a lot of efficiency in downloading files only once. If a copy of a file is cached, the app doesn't have to waste time, battery and other resources downloading it every time. Instead, the app only needs to download modified or new files.
Disadvantages of caching
While modern software often relies heavily on the use of cache, there are also some drawbacks.
- They can take up a lot of storage space. In principle, a cache is a small storage of files. But sometimes caches can grow large and limit the available space on your device. Clearing the cache can delete the files and restore a large amount of memory.
- A corrupted cache can cause your device to misbehave. If something is wrong with a file stored in cache, it can cause incorrect data to be displayed, fail or even crash. That's why it's common and necessary to clean up your cache from time to time.
- Caches can prevent apps from loading the latest version of a website or other data. In theory, apps should only use the cache to show files that haven't changed since the last visit. However, this doesn't always work and sometimes the only way to see the latest version of a website or other info is to clear the cache, forcing it to download anything new.
Read more about Speed optimization.
