Did you know that every time you browse the Internet, order goods online, chat in a chat room, or read your email on the Web your browser stores information on your computer? It’s called the browser cache and it consist of Temporary Internet Files, browser history, and cookies placed onto your computer by websites. The cache is used to speed up access to websites you’ve visited, because it re-uses stored information and reduces the amount of data that needs to be transmitted. So in theory browser cache is a good thing.
The bad thing about Temporary Internet Files is that they take up a lot of hard drive space and can slow down your computer. Also they are a potential privacy threat. That’s why it’s recommended to delete Temporary Internet Files every once in a while.
Every browser is different, so in this article we are going to show you how to delete Temporary Internet Files in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome to speed up computer performance.
Internet Explorer 8
- Open Internet Explorer and click on the Tools menu
- Then click on Delete Browsing History...
- Tick the Temporary Internet Filescheckbox
- Now click on the Delete button
Internet Explorer has an option to automatically clear the cache and delete Temporary Internet Files every time you close the browser. To enable it, click on theAdvanced tab, find the Security section, and check the box next to the Empty Temporary Internet Files folder when browser is closed. Click OK. This will delete everything except cookies.
Mozilla Firefox
- Open Firefox and click on Tools
- Click on Clear Recent History
- Select Everything in the Time rangesection
- Then click on Details and select Cache
- Click on the Clear Now button
If you want Firefox to clear the cache automatically when you close the browser, go to Tools and click on Options. Then select the Privacy tab and check the Clear history when Firefox closes checkbox. Click on the Settings button to specify what you want deleted.
Google Chrome
- Open Chrome and click the Toolsmenu in the upper-right corner.
- Select Options
- Then go to the Under the Hoodtab and click on Clear Browsing Data...
- Check the Empty the cachecheckbox
- Select the time range from the drop-down menu. We recommend selecting Everything
- Click on the Clear Browsing Data button and you’re done!
Apart from Temporary Internet Files there are a lot of other types of junk files that inevitably accumulate on every PC over time. These useless files can waste huge amounts of space on your disk and cause Windows to run slowly. You can download a 15-day free trial of our system maintenance utility - Auslogics BoostSpeed to check whether your computer is bloated with junk files. The program also allows you to quickly delete Temporary Internet Files of the following Internet browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari and Netscape. When people ask "how to make my computer faster?", I always recommend Auslogics BoostSpeed as it's the only computer optimization software I rely on.