Caches..safe to delete?

[aaagat111]

What exactly is the caches folder? Can i delete its contents, or are they important for the OS.

Are there any other folders that i can delete its contents to save any space.

-AAA

 

[HexMonkey]

Caches store information that can help speed up some operations that have already been done in the past. They are safe to delete, but will result in a short-term performance hit until the caches have been recreated.

If you're deleting them just to save space though, there's not a lot of point. It will only help in the short term, because the caches will just be recreated again when you you repeat the tasks that originally created them.

 

[mj_1903]

Of course it all depends on what caches you are deleting... It's usually best however to get the application associated with the cache to delete it, for instance "Safari -> Empty Cache" in Safari.

There are other caches that I would advise not deleting by yourself and these include the low level .Mac and keychain caches. I have deleted the former and it has created issues.