How to Clear Microsoft Teams' Cache on Mac

Microsoft Teams is the heaviest collaboration app on most Macs. Not surprising — it’s a kitchen-sink Electron app trying to do chat, meetings, files, calendar, and a half-dozen integrations all at once. The cost is a cache directory that routinely passes 2GB on regular users.

Microsoft also moved to “new Teams” (Teams 2.0) in 2023, and the cache locations changed. Here’s the current map for macOS Sonoma 14 and Sequoia 15.

Where Teams 2.0 stores its cache

The new Teams uses macOS sandboxing, so its data lives in a Containers folder rather than Application Support:

• ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.teams2/Data/Library/Caches/ — primary cache
• ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.teams2/Data/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/MSTeams/ — app data, settings, and additional caches
• ~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.com.microsoft.teams/ — shared cross-app data

If you’re somehow still on classic Teams (the old one), the path is ~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Teams/ instead.

The cache subfolders inside Containers that grow most:

• Cache — HTTP cache
• Code Cache — compiled JS
• GPUCache — graphics cache
• Service Worker/CacheStorage — embedded asset storage
• IndexedDB — channel and chat state

The fast clear for Teams 2.0

1. Quit Teams completely. Right-click the Teams icon in the dock → Quit. Verify with Activity Monitor — Teams leaves background helpers running constantly.
2. Open Finder.
3. Press Cmd+Shift+G.
4. Paste ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.teams2/Data/Library/Caches/.
5. Select everything and move it to the Trash.
6. Empty the Trash.
7. Reopen Teams.

Teams will rebuild what it needs. You stay signed in, your chats are intact, your meetings are still scheduled — Microsoft keeps that data on their servers. You’re just deleting a local copy.

Going deeper: clearing Application Support

If Teams is still acting up after the cache wipe — slow loading, missing icons, weird sync issues — go further.

1. Quit Teams.
2. Navigate to ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.teams2/Data/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/MSTeams/.
3. Inside, you’ll see folders like EBWebView, Logs, Cookies. The EBWebView folder is the embedded Edge view’s cache and can be safely removed.
4. Move EBWebView to the Trash.
5. Empty Trash and relaunch.

Don’t delete the entire MSTeams folder unless you want to fully reset Teams. That removes auth tokens and forces a re-login.

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Classic Teams (the old one)

If you’re still on classic Teams, the cache lives at ~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Teams/. Folders to delete:

• Cache
• Code Cache
• GPUCache
• Service Worker
• tmp
• IndexedDB (optional — clears more, takes longer to repopulate)

Same drill: quit Teams, drag folders to Trash, empty Trash, relaunch. Microsoft is in the process of retiring classic Teams, so if you have the choice, switch to Teams 2.0 from the toggle in the top left of the app.

What clearing the cache fixes

A cache clear is the standard fix for these Teams problems:

• App is slow on launch. Bloated cache often the cause.
• Chat search returns wrong or stale results. Cache index out of sync.
• Notifications missing or duplicated. Service Worker cache corruption.
• Profile pictures showing old versions. Avatar cache hasn’t refreshed.
• Meeting join button greyed out. Calendar sync cache issue.

Clearing the cache is the first thing Microsoft Support tells you to try, before any other troubleshooting.

Why Teams’ cache grows so fast

Microsoft Teams loads roughly 30 different web modules — chat, calendar, files, meeting, planner, lists, and so on. Each one caches independently. Every meeting recording preview, every file thumbnail, every Loop component, every embedded Office document — all cached.

A typical heavy user (50+ chats, multiple channels, daily meetings) accumulates 2–3GB of cache in a few months.

Clearing Teams alongside other Microsoft apps

If you have Outlook, OneNote, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint installed, those have their own caches scattered across ~/Library/Containers/. Microsoft uses sandbox containers for all the modern Office apps:

• ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Outlook/
• ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.onenote.mac/
• ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Word/
• ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Excel/
• ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Powerpoint/

Each has its own Caches folder inside Data/Library/Caches/. Outlook in particular can get massive if you have years of email cached.

Clear caches across every app at onceSweep does what 20 manual cache clears do — in 30 seconds. Free for macOS →

Reinstalling Teams as a last resort

If nothing else works, a fresh install often does. To do it cleanly:

1. Quit Teams.
2. Drag Microsoft Teams from /Applications to the Trash.
3. Delete ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.teams2/.
4. Delete ~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.com.microsoft.teams/.
5. Empty Trash.
6. Download fresh from microsoft.com/teams.
7. Sign in.

That’s a true clean reinstall. Most app uninstall leftovers are exactly the kind of thing a uninstaller tool catches automatically.

How often to clear Teams cache

If you live in Teams 8 hours a day: monthly is reasonable.

If you use Teams a few times a week: every 3–6 months.

If you barely use it: it’ll grow slowly. Once a year or whenever it’s misbehaving.

The signs it’s overdue: slow launches, search returning weird results, channels showing old content until you click them, profile pictures looking wrong. Those are all cache symptoms.

Worth automating?

Microsoft Teams alone is a hassle to clean — multiple folders, sandbox containers, weird subdirectories. Doing the same for Outlook, then Slack, then Chrome, then Spotify gets old fast.

Sweep automates the whole process. It knows where every Microsoft Office sandbox lives, where every Electron app caches, where browsers stash their data, and where macOS itself accumulates junk. Scans, shows you a clear list of what’s reclaimable, then clears once you approve. Free download from sweep.app — works on Sonoma 14 and Sequoia 15, Apple Silicon and Intel.

For Teams alone, the manual approach above is fine. For ongoing Mac maintenance, automating is the only way it actually gets done.

Bottom line

Teams 2.0 caches at ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.teams2/Data/Library/Caches/. Clearing it is safe — you stay signed in, your data persists, you just give up some local performance optimizations that get rebuilt as you use the app. Worth doing every few months on heavy use, or whenever Teams starts feeling sluggish.