How to Clear Vivaldi's Cache on Mac

Vivaldi is the power-user Chromium browser — built-in mail, calendar, RSS feeds, notes, tab tiling, and a customization surface area larger than most browsers’ entire feature set. All those extras come with their own data footprint. A long-time Vivaldi user with mail and calendar enabled often has a profile folder pushing 3GB.

Here’s how to clean it up properly on macOS Sonoma 14 and Sequoia 15.

Where Vivaldi caches data on Mac

Standard Chromium cache locations:

• ~/Library/Application Support/Vivaldi/Default/Cache/ — primary HTTP cache
• ~/Library/Application Support/Vivaldi/Default/Code Cache/ — compiled JavaScript
• ~/Library/Application Support/Vivaldi/Default/GPUCache/ — GPU shaders
• ~/Library/Application Support/Vivaldi/Default/Service Worker/CacheStorage/ — embedded asset cache
• ~/Library/Caches/com.vivaldi.Vivaldi/ — system-level cache

Vivaldi-specific extras:

• ~/Library/Application Support/Vivaldi/Default/Vivaldi Mail/ — local mail database (can be huge)
• ~/Library/Application Support/Vivaldi/Default/Vivaldi Calendar/ — calendar data
• ~/Library/Application Support/Vivaldi/Default/Notes/ — your Vivaldi notes
• ~/Library/Application Support/Vivaldi/Default/Sessions/ — saved tab sessions

If you use Vivaldi Mail with a heavy IMAP account, the Vivaldi Mail folder alone can hit several GB. That’s not cache exactly — it’s local mail storage — but it’s worth knowing about.

In-app cache clear

The Chromium standard works fine in Vivaldi:

1. Open Vivaldi.
2. Press Cmd+Shift+Delete.
3. Set Time range to All time.
4. Check Cached images and files.
5. Optionally also Cookies and other site data.
6. Click Clear Browsing Data.

You can also reach this from Vivaldi menu → Tools → Delete Browsing Data, or Settings → Privacy → Clear Browsing Data.

This clears web cache. It doesn’t touch Vivaldi Mail, Calendar, or Notes data.

Manual cache clearing

If the in-app option isn’t enough or you want to clean without launching Vivaldi:

1. Quit Vivaldi (Cmd+Q).
2. Open Finder, press Cmd+Shift+G.
3. Paste ~/Library/Application Support/Vivaldi/Default/.
4. Move these to the Trash: Cache, Code Cache, GPUCache, Service Worker.
5. Also clear ~/Library/Caches/com.vivaldi.Vivaldi/.
6. Empty Trash.
7. Reopen Vivaldi.

Your tabs, bookmarks, history, passwords, mail, calendar, notes — all preserved. Cache rebuilds as you browse.

Don’t dig through ~/Library yourselfSweep knows where every app stores its cache. Free download for Mac →

Vivaldi Mail can be the real space hog

If you’ve enabled Vivaldi Mail and connected a few IMAP accounts, the local mail database in ~/Library/Application Support/Vivaldi/Default/Vivaldi Mail/ can hit 5GB+ on accounts with years of email.

This isn’t really cache — Vivaldi Mail keeps a local copy of your messages for fast searching and offline access. Clearing it forces a re-sync from your mail server, which can take hours on a large mailbox.

If space is tight and you don’t actually use Vivaldi Mail, consider disabling it:

1. Vivaldi Settings → Mail → Mail Settings.
2. Remove configured accounts.
3. Or quit Vivaldi and delete the Vivaldi Mail folder entirely.

If you do use it, leave it alone. Re-syncing a multi-GB mailbox is slow and uses bandwidth.

Don’t delete these

In ~/Library/Application Support/Vivaldi/Default/, leave these alone unless you specifically want to lose the data:

• Bookmarks — bookmarks
• History — browsing history
• Login Data — saved passwords
• Cookies — session cookies
• Web Data — autofill
• Sessions — saved tab sessions
• Notes — your Vivaldi notes
• Vivaldi Mail — local mail copy
• Vivaldi Calendar — calendar database

Cache folders rebuild. Data folders don’t.

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Multiple Vivaldi profiles

Vivaldi supports user profiles, each with its own data folder. They’re at:

• ~/Library/Application Support/Vivaldi/Profile 1/
• ~/Library/Application Support/Vivaldi/Profile 2/
• And so on.

Each has its own cache subfolders matching the same layout as Default. Clearing the cache for one profile doesn’t affect the others.

Why Vivaldi can grow large

A few reasons:

1. Built-in mail keeps full local copies of IMAP accounts.
2. Tab Stacks and Workspaces cache thumbnails for visual previews.
3. Page actions and gestures cache custom JavaScript.
4. Extensions install at the profile level and can grow with use.
5. Standard Chromium cache behaves the same as Chrome.

A heavy user with mail enabled and 100+ open tabs across Workspaces can easily hit 4-5GB of total profile data.

When clearing the cache helps

• Sites loading old assets
• Sluggish startup
• Service Worker stuck on bad state
• Disk space pressure
• Specific site behaving weirdly

When it won’t help: mail sync issues (those need mail-specific troubleshooting), extension conflicts, sync problems, theme/UI customization weirdness.

Reinstalling Vivaldi

If Vivaldi is deeply broken:

1. Note your Vivaldi sync credentials if you use Vivaldi Sync.
2. Export bookmarks if not synced.
3. Quit Vivaldi.
4. Drag Vivaldi from /Applications to Trash.
5. Delete ~/Library/Application Support/Vivaldi/.
6. Delete ~/Library/Caches/com.vivaldi.Vivaldi/.
7. Empty Trash.
8. Reinstall from vivaldi.com.
9. Sign in to Sync. Bookmarks, passwords, settings, and notes restore.

Mail and calendar accounts you’ll need to reconnect manually — those don’t sync.

How often makes sense

Daily Vivaldi: every 2-3 months for cache.

Vivaldi Mail user: don’t touch the mail folder unless you’re disabling mail entirely.

Light Vivaldi use: yearly cache clear.

Multi-browser household: stagger or automate.

Worth automating?

Vivaldi alone is fine to clean manually with Cmd+Shift+Delete. Across multiple browsers and a Mac full of apps, automation makes sense.

Sweep handles every Chromium-based browser including Vivaldi, plus Safari, Firefox, every Electron app, and macOS system caches. Shows you what’s reclaimable, clears with your approval. Free download for macOS Sonoma 14 and Sequoia 15.

Bottom line

Vivaldi’s main cache is at ~/Library/Application Support/Vivaldi/Default/Cache/. Cmd+Shift+Delete inside Vivaldi clears it cleanly. Manual works if you want to verify or you’ve already removed the app. Stay out of the Mail, Calendar, Notes, and Sessions folders unless you specifically want to delete that data.