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up vote 3 down vote favorite

The biggest culprit is Google Music, but i would like to clear out all of my caches fairly quickly. If I'm using my phone as a camera, having everything cached totally eats up my SD card's storage space, so I would like to either turn down the amount of caching for Google Maps, Google Music, and a few other apps, turn up how frequently the cache is cleared, or have some way to automatically clear the caches when I want to.

I'm running an HTC Incredible with CM7.

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4 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

you can delete the application cache directories, in /data/data but that will also remove any settings and things like that.

You can also use Clockwork recovery (if its available for that device) and "wipe data", but again, it will clear out the settings too. If the SDCard is the big concern, you can either use ADB or even Windows (when the sdcard is mounted) and delete the folders that contain the cache data that is taking up space.

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There would be no side effects for deleting the cache directories? I found that they are located at /Android/data/[app]/cache. Can I just delete that cache directory without any problems? – Thomas Owens Jun 20 '11 at 18:30
you could probably run a "rm" command that would just delete the child "cache" directory, but I am not fluent enough to be able to tell you how. – Ryan Conrad Jun 20 '11 at 18:33
I'm more concerned with what would happen if I just deleted them from Windows or another app. Optimally, I would like to control the caching behavior, but if I can't, I'd like to be 100% sure that just flat-out deleting the cache directories is safe. – Thomas Owens Jun 20 '11 at 18:34
deleting them "should" be safe. but there is really no telling if the app really uses that cache directory for much. Not all applications will use that directory. while it is the "standard" place for them to put data, they do not have to. You could test if it would be "safe", by removing your sdcard and see if the apps function correctly. – Ryan Conrad Jun 20 '11 at 18:45
up vote 1 down vote

There are plenty of apps in the market that will do this. 1Tap Cache Cleaner is one that supports both manual and periodic cache cleaning.

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up vote 0 down vote

Some devices, e.g. the Galaxy S, have a cache wipe option in their recovery. Clockworkmod Recovery has a "Wipe cache partition" option.

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I use Clockwork Recovery, so I'll check that out. – Thomas Owens Jun 20 '11 at 19:58
up vote 0 down vote

Quick App Manager is also a good (albeit not-free) choice for bulk cache cleaning. With it you can do one-touch clearing of all application cache. At the present exchange rate it is $1.07.

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.cerisierbleu.qac&feature=search_result

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