If Google Chrome is using a lot of disk space for cache, follow these steps to limit Google Cache size in Windows 10.
Every time you visit a website in the Chrome browser, it will cache that site. When you visit the same website next time, Chrome will use the previously cached data to load that website faster. For a majority of users, this is a good thing because the web browsing experience will be faster and snappier.
However, left to its own devices, Google Chrome will use a lot of storage space for caching. On my computer, Chrome uses more than 6GB for caching purposes.
If you don’t like this behavior and would like to limit Chrome cache size, follow the below steps. The steps shown below will work in Windows 7 and 8 too.
Limit Chrome cache size in Windows 10
These are the steps you should follow to limit the Chrome cache size.
- Open the Start menu.
- Search for “Google Chrome” and open it.
- After opening it, right-click on the Chrome icon in the taskbar.
- In the list, right-click on “Google Chrome” and select “Properties“.
- In the “Target” field, add
--disk-cache-size=1073741824flag at the end of the file path. - Click on the “Ok” button to save the changes.
Note:
- 1073741824 in step 5 is 1 GB in bytes. If you want to, you can replace it with any amount of space. For instance, to restrict the Google Chrome cache size to just 300MB, replace 1073741824 with 314572800. Use this website for byte conversions.
- The limit you set using the “–disk-cache-size” flag is just a suggestion. i.e, it is not a hard limit. If Chrome reaches the limit you set and it needs a bit more to properly store the cache, it will round up the cache size to accommodate the data.
- This trick is limited to the current Chrome profile only. If you have multiple Chrome profiles, you need to set the cache size for each profile individually.
Steps to See Current Chrome Cache Size
If you are interested, you can see how much space Chrome is currently using for caching. Follow the steps shown below to find the current Google Chrome cache size.
- Press “Win + R” to open the Run dialog box.
- In the blank field, type “%localappdata%GoogleChromeUser DataDefault”.
- Click on the “Ok” button.
- In the File Explorer, find the “Cache” folder.
- Right-click on the “Cache” folder and select “Properties”.
- In the properties window, you will see the cache size next to “Size”.
The cache size you see in the properties is the full cache size of Google Chrome for your Windows user account. Each Windows user account has its own cache folder. If you have multiple Windows users and want to see cache sizes of those other accounts, you need to follow the same steps after logging in to those Windows user accounts.
That all there is to do. You’ve successfully changed the Google Chrome cache size in Windows 10. When you want to remove the cache limit on Chrome, just remove the disk-cache-size flag in the target field and you are good to go.
I hope that helps. If you are stuck or need some help, comment below and I will try to help as much as possible. If you like this article check out how to rename Chrome tabs.
— Update: 18-03-2023 — us.suanoncolosence.com found an additional article Google Chrome is testing larger cache sizes to increase performance from the website www.bleepingcomputer.com for the keyword change chrome cache size performance.
Google is experimenting with increased storage for the browser cache to reduce the performance hit caused by the recently added partitioned cache feature.
Before Chrome 85, the browser used a single storage bucket to store cached resources, such as images, audio, video, and HTML content for all pages that you have previously visited. When Chrome opens a web page, it will check if requested resources are stored in the cache, and if they are, load it from the local disk rather than download it from a remote server.
Using a single shared storage bucket for all cached resources, though, opens up a range of side-channel attacks that could allow sites to perform malicious activity.
“This opens the browser to a side-channel attack where one site can detect if another site has loaded a resource by checking if it’s in the cache. That sounds innocuous, but it can be used for many nefarious deeds such as discovering what’s in your inbox, contacts, etc.,” Google Chrome engineers Josh Karlin and Shivani Sharma explain in a document on cache partitioning.
To prevent these side-channel attacks, Google added a new feature to Chrome 85 that partitions the browser’s disk cache so that each site utilizes its own cache that cannot be read by other sites.
Cache partitioning decreases performance
When Google tested this new feature, they found that it cause small performance hit, but it was outweighed by the security benefits.
“Early (canary/dev) results using top-frame-site show that the impact isn’t nearly as bad as feared. The cache hit rate drops by about 4% but changes to first contentful paint aren’t statistically significant and the overall fraction of bytes loaded from the cache only drops from 39.1% to 37.8%. This may change as we progress to beta and stable but it seems like an encouraging start,” the Google engineers stated.
This performance hit is caused by resources previously shared among all sites now having to be downloaded for every site that uses them.
To improve this feature’s performance, Google is experimenting with increased disk cache sizes to prevent resources from being evicted from the cache to quickly.
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“Add code to enable experimentation of different http cache sizes. Now that cache will be partitioned, it makes sense to see if increasing the cache size helps offset some performance impact by lowering the eviction rate,” Sharma explained in a Chrome Gerrit post.
As part of this test, the browser’s performance will be measured at different disk cache sizes to see if increasing them to larger values positively impacts performance. During this test, Google plans on testing cache storage that is 2x, 2.5x, and 3x the normal cache size.
Google is hoping that increasing the disk cache size will reduce the number of times the browser has to remove older cached items as storage runs out. This increased storage would then potentially increase the number of cached items at one time and improve web browsing performance.
It is unknown if this change is being tested in Google Chrome Canary builds or internal builds.
Update 12/26/20: According to Eric Lawrence, Microsoft Edge program Manager for the web platform, Google does not test new feature in internal builds. Instead they conduct field trials in the Canary, Beta, and Dev builds to determine whether a tested feature achieves the desired results.
Lawrence told BleepingComputer that this particular field trial is not yet live as Sharma is likely waiting for approval from the metrics code owner, which this trial will be added to.
— Update: 19-03-2023 — us.suanoncolosence.com found an additional article Change Chrome Cache Size In Windows 10 from the website techcult.com for the keyword change chrome cache size performance.
Around 310 million people are using Google Chrome as their primary browser because of its reliability, ease of use, and above all, its extension base.
Google Chrome: Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser that is developed and maintained by Google. It is freely available to download and to use. It is supported by all platforms like Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, etc. Though Google Chrome offers so much, it still bothers its users with the amount of disk space it takes to cache web items.
Cache: Cache is a software or hardware component that is used to store data and information, temporarily in a computer environment. It is frequently used by cache clients, such as CPU, applications, web browsers, or operating systems. Cache reduces data access time, which makes the system faster and more responsive.
If you have ample space in your hard disk, then allocating or sparing a few GBs for caching is no problem because caching increases the page speed. But if you have less disk space and you see that Google Chrome is taking too much space for caching, then you have to option to change cache size for Chrome in Windows 7/8/10 and free disk space.
If you are wondering, how much is your Chrome browser caching, then to know that just type “chrome://net-internals/#httpCache” in the address bar and press Enter. Here, you can see the space used by Chrome for caching just beside “Current size.” However, the size is always displayed in bytes.
Moreover, Google Chrome does not allow you to change the cache size within the settings page, but you can limit the Chrome cache size in Windows.
After checking the space occupied by Google Chrome for caching, if you feel like you need to change the cache size for Google Chrome, then follow the below steps.
As seen above, Google Chrome does not provide any option to change the cache size directly from the settings page; it is rather easy to do so in Windows. All you need to do is to add a flag to the Google Chrome shortcut. Once the flag is added, Google Chrome will limit the cache size according to your settings.
How to change Google Chrome Cache Size in Windows 10
Follow the below steps to change Google Chrome cache size in Windows 10:
1. Launch Google Chrome using a search bar or by clicking on the icon available at the desktop.
2. Once Google Chrome is launched, its icon will display at the Taskbar.
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3. Right-click on the Chrome icon available at the Taskbar.
4. Then again, right-click on the Google Chrome option available in the menu that will open up.
Also Read: Fix ERR_CACHE_MISS Error in Google Chrome
5. A new Menu will open up—select the ‘Properties’ option from there.
6. Then, the Google Chrome Properties dialog box will open up. Switch to the Shortcut tab.
7. In the Shortcut tab, a Target field will be there. Add the following at the end of the file path.
8. The size you want Google chrome to use for caching (For example -disk-cache-size=2147483648).
9. The size you will mention will be in bytes. In the above example, the size that is provided is in bytes and is equal to 2GB.
10. After mentioning the cache size, click on the OK button available at the bottom of the page.
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After completing the above steps, the cache size flag will be added, and you have successfully changed the cache size for the Google chrome in Windows 10. If ever you want to remove the cache limit for Google chrome, simply remove the –disk-cache-size flag, and the limit will be removed.
Source: https://windowsloop.com/limit-chrome-cache-size/