How to Clear Facebook Cache on iPhone (Two Ways)

The Facebook app has its own clear button. Open Facebook, go to the Menu, then Settings, then Browser, and tap Clear next to Cookies and cache. That empties Facebook's in-app browser store. To clear everything else the app has saved, delete the app in Settings > General > iPhone Storage and reinstall it — offloading it will not do the job.

iOS gives you no per-app cache button. Android does, which is why most guides on how to clear facebook cache on iphone end up describing two different things that both get called "cache": the store Facebook's own in-app browser keeps, and the pile of files the app itself has written to your phone.

They are cleared in different places, and only one of them has a button. It is worth knowing which problem you have before you start deleting apps.

How to clear Facebook cache on iPhone in the app

This is the route with an actual Clear control, and it is the one to try first. It empties the cookies and cached pages that Facebook's built-in browser has collected from links you tapped inside the app.

1. Open the Facebook app and tap the Menu icon — the three horizontal lines.

2. Open Settings. Depending on your app version you will either tap Settings & privacy first and then Settings, or tap a gear icon that takes you straight there.

3. Scroll down the settings list and tap Browser.

4. Under the browsing data heading, tap Clear next to Cookies and cache, then confirm.

You stay logged into Facebook itself. What you lose is the saved state of sites you opened through Facebook — so a shopping site you were signed into via a Facebook link will ask you to sign in again.

Where the labels differ

Facebook moves this screen around more than most apps, and current guides disagree on the details. The Menu icon sits in the bottom right on some versions and the top right on others. The Browser row is filed under a heading called Preferences in some write-ups and Permissions in others.

The destination is stable even when the path is not: you are looking for a screen called Browser with a Clear button on it. If the row is not where a guide says, scroll the whole settings list rather than assuming the feature is gone.

When you need to delete the app instead

The in-app Clear button does not touch the images and videos the app cached while you scrolled. For that, the app itself has to go.

Apple's storage documentation draws the line clearly. Of offloading, it says it "frees up storage used by the app, but keeps its documents and data." Of deleting, it says it "removes the app and its related data." Cached files sit in that data, so offloading will not clear them — a point several popular guides get backwards.

1. Open Settings and tap General.

2. Tap iPhone Storage and wait for the list of apps to finish loading.

3. Tap Facebook.

4. Tap Delete App and confirm. Do not tap Offload App.

5. Reinstall Facebook from the App Store and open it.

Be ready to sign in again afterwards. Nothing on your account is affected — your posts, photos, messages and friends live on Meta's servers, not on the phone.

What clearing the Facebook cache does not do

It does not clear Safari. Facebook's in-app browser and Safari keep separate stores, so if you also use facebook.com in Safari you have a second cache to clear on the iPhone side.

It does not delete anything from your account, and it does not reduce what Facebook knows about you. This is a local storage clean-up, not a privacy control.

It also may not free up as much space as you expect. Apple notes that on the per-app storage screen, "Cached data and temporary data might not count as usage" — so the number you see before deleting is not a reliable estimate of what you will get back. If storage is the real problem, there are bigger levers to pull first.

Common questions

Why is there no cache button in iOS Settings? Apple does not expose one. iOS manages cached files itself: "To free up space, your device removes cached and temporary files, so you don't have to." Android surfaces a per-app cache control; iOS does not, which is the whole reason this question gets asked.

Will clearing the cache fix a Facebook app that keeps crashing or will not load? It sometimes does, and it is cheap to try. But a reinstall is doing more than clearing cache — it also replaces a damaged app. If the problem returns quickly, the cache was not the cause.

Do I need to do this regularly? No. There is no maintenance benefit to clearing it on a schedule; the cache exists to make the app faster, and it rebuilds itself either way.

If the Browser option isn't there

Update the Facebook app from the App Store first — this screen has moved between versions and an old build may not have it at all. If it is still missing after updating, the delete-and-reinstall route above clears the same data and more, and does not depend on finding any particular settings screen.