/Library/Caches vs ~/Library/Caches: What's the Difference?

/Library/Caches is the shared, system-wide cache folder for every user on the Mac. ~/Library/Caches is your own cache folder inside your home folder. The user one usually holds far more data and is where app caches are cleared. The system one is normally small and best left alone unless one folder in it is clearly huge. On the Mac we checked, the system folder held 8.4 MB and the user folder 1.1 GB. Other accounts on the Mac have caches of their own, covered in shared storage across user accounts.

The difference between the two folders

• /Library/Caches belongs to the whole Mac. It is written by system services and installers, and it is shared by all accounts.
• ~/Library/Caches belongs to one user. The ~ stands for your home folder, for example /Users/yourname. Apps you run as that user store their caches here.

To see what ~ means on your Mac:

echo ~

What we found on a real Mac

We listed both folders on one Mac running macOS 27.3. Your numbers will differ.

• /Library/Caches: 8.4 MB in 9 items, owned by root with the admin group. The items included ColorSync, Desktop Pictures, com.apple.iconservices.store and two folders for a software updater.
• ~/Library/Caches: 1.1 GB in 48 items, readable only by the owner.

To check your own Mac:

ls -ld /Library/Caches ~/Library/Caches
du -sh /Library/Caches ~/Library/Caches 2>/dev/null
du -sh /Library/Caches/* 2>/dev/null | sort -h | tail -10

Why /Library/Caches is shown as world-writable

On our Mac the permissions were drwxrwxrwt. The final t is the sticky bit. Any user can add files to the folder, but a file can only be removed by its owner or by an administrator. That is why deleting items from it often asks for your password.

Is it safe to delete /Library/Caches?

• Don't delete the folder itself. macOS and other software expect it to exist.
• There is usually little to gain. It was 8.4 MB on our Mac. The space is almost always in ~/Library/Caches instead.
• If one subfolder is clearly large, find out which app owns it, quit that app, and remove only that subfolder. It will be rebuilt as needed. If you can't tell which app it belongs to, leave it.
• Use the Trash, not rm -rf, so you can restore something if an app misbehaves.

How to open these folders

In Finder choose Go → Go to Folder and type /Library/Caches for the system folder, or ~/Library/Caches for yours. Both are visible in Terminal too, with the commands above.

If space is your real concern, see how to find large files on Mac, what System Data is, and what /var/folders is.