Most of us have spent many hours watching videos on YouTube. For me, it's guitar and piano tutorials. For other people, it's gardening or DIY. The point is that YouTube is so huge that there are videos for well-nigh everyone. If you spend a lot of fourth dimension on YouTube, you may remember that it stores lots of data on your Mac and that you need to clear information technology out from fourth dimension to time. YouTube doesn't shop whatsoever more data on your Mac than near other websites, just together all the websites you visit and apps you install store quite a bit of cache files, and it's worth having a clear-out now and once again.

Does YouTube cache videos?

No, not anymore. In the early days of YouTube, when video streaming over the web was in its infancy, bandwidth was restricted, and most videos were, at nigh, standard resolution, caching fabricated sense. It didn't require a lot of space to shop the information, and there was a real do good to non having to re-stream the video if you went dorsum to an earlier section or wanted to sentinel the video again.

All the same, applied science has improved, nearly videos are now HD, and net connections are much faster. So caching would crave much more space for much less do good.

YouTube at present uses a Dynamic Agile Streaming over HTTP (Dash) that adapts the stream depending on the user'south bandwidth.

Tip: Lookout man videos in 4K on your Mac

If you lot have a Mac with a 4K display, yous can sentinel YouTube videos in 4K. Head over to a aqueduct, such as the HDR Channel, that has 4K videos. Play a video, and so click the cog in the toolbar and choose 2160p every bit the resolution.


How to clear YouTube cookies and cache

To clear temporary files saved on your Mac by YouTube, y'all'll need to apply the information immigration pick in the browser you use to access YouTube.

How to clear YouTube cache and cookies in Safari

  1. Click the Safari menu and choose Preferences.
  2. Cull the Privacy tab and printing Manage Website Data.
  3. Locate YouTube in the list of websites, select it, and press Remove.

How to clear YouTube cookies and cache in Chrome

  1. Launch Chrome and paste this into the address bar: chrome://settings/clearBrowserData
  2. Choose a fourth dimension catamenia from the dropdown bill of fare.
  3. Check the boxes next to the data you lot want to clear.
  4. Press Clear data.

How to articulate YouTube cache and cookies in Firefox

  1. Launch Firefox and paste this into the accost bar: most:preferences#privacy
  2. Ringlet downwards to Cookies and Site Data.
  3. Click Manage Data.
  4. In the window that opens, search for YouTube and check the box next to it.
  5. Click Remove Selected.

Tip: Create playlists to make videos easier to find

If yous salvage lots of videos to watch afterward, creating lists tin can make information technology easier to notice them. To exercise that, find a video you want to add to a list, press Save in the toolbar and cull Create a new playlist. Give it a name and press Salve. The next time you want to save a video to the list, press Save and cull the list from the menu.

How to articulate cache and other data easily

CleanMyMac X - System junk scan complete

Instead of clearing cache data from web browsers individually, yous can exercise it all at in one case and remove lots of other junk files at the same time using CleanMyMac X's Organisation Junk tool. It can free upward several gigabytes of infinite on your Mac by getting rid of files y'all don't need. Here's how to utilize it.

  1. Download and install CleanMyMac X, then launch it.
  2. Choose Arrangement Junk in the sidebar and press Run.
  3. Press Review details to see what it has found.
  4. Check the box next to the information you desire to delete and press Make clean.

YouTube no longer caches videos as you stream them, but like most websites, it stores some information on your Mac. You can remove browser cache files by using the tools in each of the spider web browsers you use or, more apace, by using CleanMyMac X's Organisation Junk tool.