Learn how to delete the App Store cache on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac to both free up space and fix problems such as the wrong balance on your Apple ID account.
What’s a cache, anyway?
In computing terminology, a cache refers to dedicated temporary storage that stores data such as images, online content such as web pages, and more. A cache typically holds copies of data stored elsewhere, like a web server or external media. The next time an app requests something that has been cached, that particular data can be served much faster as compared to fetching the data from the original source.
Your apps and computers are using caches all the time without any action required on your part. The most obvious example is Safari. When you click a web page in Safari, the system first checks whether it already exists in the cache to speed up page loading time dramatically. If not, the page is loaded and then stored in the Safari cache.
But on some occasions, you may have encountered this problem already where Safari doesn’t realize that the page has changed and shows you an old version from the cache. Well, the App Store on your Mac is much like Safari in that regard.
The good news is that clearing the App Store cache is one of the ways to fix common issues such as unavailable apps, outdated app pages, wrong balance on your Apple ID account, the App Store refusing to load at all, and more.
Clear the App Store cache on your Mac
To clear the App Store cache, you’ll need to use both a Terminal command and the Finder to find and trash two special folders on your Mac.
1) Launch the Terminal app via Spotlight or from your Applications/Utilities folder.
2) Type this into your Terminal window and press the enter key: open $TMPDIR../C/com.apple.appstore/ This will open a new Finder window with some files.
3) In the Finder window, trash the folder named “com.apple.AppStore” by opening the folder and selecting all of the files within, then dragging them to the Trash or right-clicking the selection and choosing “Move to Trash.”
4) Now click the Finder’s Go menu and choose the command labeled “Go to Folder.”
5) Paste the following path in the text box, then press Enter on the keyboard: ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.appstore/
6) If you see the “fsCachedData” folder in the Finder window, trash its contents. You may have to go inside the “CommerceRequestCache” folder to see this.
You’ve now cleared the App Store cache. You may also want to empty the contents of the Trash by right-clicking the Trash icon in the Dock and choosing “Empty Trash” from the menu. This should resolve problems stemming from a corrupt cache, outdated content stored within the cache, and so forth.
Clear the App Store cache on iPhone and iPad
Because iOS and iPadOS are more restricting than macOS, you’re prohibited from deleting any files from system folders unless you jailbreak. But thankfully, you can employ the same force-quitting trick that works for many other apps.
1) With the App Store loaded, open the app switcher by swiping up from the bottom of the screen on iPhone with Face ID or double-tapping the Home button on iPhones with Touch ID.
2) Swipe right until you find the App Store app thumbnail, then swipe up over it.
The App Store will fetch server data from scratch the next time you open it. As mentioned, force-quitting an app will force it to reload data on the next launch.
On older versions of iOS, it was possible to delete the App Store cache by touching one of the bottom App Store tabs in the app ten times in quick succession, but that trick no longer works.
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