Google Android operating system for the mobile devices offers millions of apps of various types, developed by Google and also by third party developers. When you install any of these apps, they create some files on your device to store the app specific information called the app cache. If the app cache becomes corrupt then the app may not behave properly. The app cache of any app can become corrupted or damaged due to a number of reasons – for example, improper shutdown of the smartphone by just pulling the battery out. Whatever the reason may be, most of the app specific problems can be fixed just by clearing the app cache.
Here is how you can clean any app’s cache in Android:
- Open the System settings screen in Android. You can do this by many methods – one of the most common being, touching the menu button on your Android smartphone (lower-left button) when you are on the home screen and then selecting System Settings from the menu that appears.
- The system settings screen will show you a list of all the settings available for your Android device categorized under different sections. You have to touch on the Apps category from this list.
- This will show you a list of all the installed apps in your Android device. You can select the app that you want to clear the cache of. In my case, I am selecting the Chorme browser app.
- When the app information screen is displayed, you have to first touch on the Force stop button to close all the running instances of the app. This is necessary for complete app cache cleanup. Next, you have to touch on the Clear data button.
- A warning message would appear explaining you what is going to be removed. You can just touch OK button to proceed and the app cache for the selected app would be cleared in a matter of seconds.
Conclusion: You can fix some of the app specific problems in Android by just cleaning the app data related to those apps. After the app cache or app data is cleared, the app behaves as if freshly installed and you also gain some memory that was being used up by that app.