How-to: How to Clear the Cache of your Safari Browser on a Mac

[Dan]

This is a short post in response to a little glitch we have seen popping up with some customers systems, when the customers come to log in to their camera or NVR using Safari they find the configuration/settings menus either crushed together and unable to click on any links or they find no menus at all. (see examples below)​

We hadn't seen this problem before and it took some testing of different possible solutions and some excellent help from our forum community to figure out that the problem was all to do with the Safari browser cache, the browser cache is where information about the sites you visit using that browser is stored and like any storage it fills up and when the cache gets too full it starts to affect how certain sites will load and you get glitches like the ones above. So every so often you will want to clear your Safari cache to stop these glitches happening, so how do you clear the Safari cache? just follow the steps below:

Step 1: Click the Safari drop-down from the top left of your screen and click on Preferences from the drop-down

Step 2: Click the Privacy tab and then click the 'Remove all website data' button

Step 3: A pop-up will appear with 2 buttons, click the Remove Now button

Now if you have a Safari software version that is v10 or below the above steps should work fine for you, but with the latest versions of Safari you may have a privacy tab that looks like this:

You can click Manage Website Data... and get a list of all the cached data and delete sites one by one, but if you don't really know what you're doing this just becomes confusing and time-consuming. With the latest the versions of Safari the easiest way to empty your cache is by following the steps below:

Step 1: Click Safari at the top left of your screen and then click Preferences

Step 2: Click the Advanced tab and then tick the box at the bottom of the window that is labeled Show Develop menu in menu bar

Step 3: Close the Preferences window and go to the Safari menu bar at the top of your screen and click Develop, from the drop-down that opens you will want to click the Empty Caches button

After you have clicked Empty Caches you simply have to wait a few seconds and then you can open your Safari browser, log in to your camera and open the configuration and settings pages which should now be fully functioning, if the problem happens again or you just want to regularly clear your cache you can simply use the keys Command+Option+E and Safari will empty the cache. (this hotkey can only be used once the initial process of activating the develop menu has been done and the Develop menu has to be active for the Hotkey to work)​

 

[Magic919]

Generally I open the tab in Private Browsing or Incognito mode as a test. If it’s cached data or cookies causing the problem, it’ll go away.