How to Clear the Apple Music App Cache on Mac

You glance at System Settings → General → Storage and see Music using 35 GB. You’ve downloaded a few playlists for offline listening, but nowhere near that much. Where’s the rest going, and how do you reclaim it?

The Music app’s storage usage is a mix of legitimate downloaded songs, accumulated artwork caches, partial downloads, and database files that grow large over time with library activity. Cleaned correctly, you can reclaim most of the bloat. Cleaned incorrectly, you can wipe your library and your custom playlists. Here’s how to do it right.

Where Music stores everything

Three main locations matter:

Library file — at ~/Music/Music/Music Library.musiclibrary. This is your library database. Holds your playlists, ratings, smart playlist rules, listening history. Don’t touch. Back it up before any cleanup.

Media folder — at ~/Music/Music/Media/. Your actual music files: imported from CD, downloaded MP3s you added, anything Music has on disk. The Apple Music subscription downloads also live here in Apple Music/. Selectively cleanable.

Caches — at ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Music/ and several related paths. Pure throwaway. Always safe to clear.

The three together can easily hit 50 GB on an active library.

Method 1: remove downloads from inside the app

The cleanest way. No risk of breaking anything.

To remove downloads selectively:

1. Open Music
2. Click Downloaded in the sidebar (under Library)
3. Find tracks with the download icon
4. Right-click → Remove Download

To bulk-remove:

1. Library → Downloaded
2. Cmd+A to select all
3. Right-click → Remove Download

Tracks stay in your library — they just have to re-download to play offline again.

To prevent future accumulation:

• Music → Settings → Files → look at where music is stored and how much is downloaded
• Disable “Automatic downloads” if you don’t want every song you save downloaded too
• Disable “Automatically download” in Music → Settings → General if you want to manage it manually

Method 2: clear the cache manually

For storage that’s not from your downloads:

1. Quit Music (Cmd+Q)
2. Activity Monitor → search “Music” → force-quit anything left running
3. In Finder, hit Cmd+Shift+G
4. Paste each of these and clear the contents (not the folders themselves):

~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Music/
~/Library/Caches/com.apple.MusicAgent/
~/Library/Caches/com.apple.amp.itmtransporter/

These cache locations hold things like artwork lookups, song metadata buffers, and temporary streaming data. Reopen Music after — caches rebuild as needed.

You can also check:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Music/Data/Library/Caches/

That’s the sandbox container’s cache. Same rules: clear contents, leave folder.

Skip the manual huntSweep clears stale audio prefs and caches that often cause oddities. Download Sweep free →

Method 3: clear partial / orphaned downloads

When downloads fail mid-way, the partial data can stick around. To check:

~/Music/Music/Media/Apple Music/

This contains your downloaded subscription tracks. Don’t manually delete files here — use the app’s “Remove Download” feature instead, because the database needs to know the file is gone.

If you delete files manually here, the app will still think they’re available, and you’ll get errors trying to play them. To recover from a manual mistake:

1. Quit Music
2. Hold Option, open Music — you get a “Choose Library” dialog
3. Pick your existing library
4. Music → File → Library → Update Cloud Library
5. The app rescans and updates state

What NOT to delete

These break your library if removed:

• ~/Music/Music/Music Library.musiclibrary — the database file
• ~/Music/Music/Media/Music/ — your imported music files (not Apple Music subscription tracks)
• ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Music.plist — your settings

If something’s labeled “Library” or “Music Library”, leave it.

How much space will you reclaim

Real numbers from a Mac with active Apple Music use:

• Caches folders: 1-3 GB
• Downloaded subscription music: 10-40 GB depending on library size
• Imported personal music: whatever you put there
• Library database: 100-300 MB

If your Music app is using 30+ GB, the bulk is downloaded subscription tracks. Cache clearing alone won’t help much — you need to remove downloads.

Sync Library considerations

If you have Sync Library on (Music → Settings → General → check Sync Library), your library state is mirrored to iCloud. This is good — losing your local library means a re-download from iCloud restores everything.

It’s also a gotcha: changes you make on Mac sync to iPhone and iPad. If you bulk-remove all downloads on Mac, your iPhone and iPad downloads stay (they’re separate). But if you delete songs from your library, they’re gone everywhere.

Make sure you’re using Remove Download (not Delete from Library) when you only want to free space.

Auto-cleanup settings

To keep storage under control going forward:

Music → Settings → Files:

• Look at “Music files location” — make sure it’s where you expect
• Consider disabling “Keep Music Media folder organized” if you have manual organization

Music → Settings → General:

• Adjust “Automatic Downloads” — turn off if you want only manual control

Music → Settings → Playback:

• Keep an eye on Audio Quality — Lossless files are 5-10x larger than standard
• If storage is tight, set Audio Quality to High Quality (256 kbps AAC) for downloads

Reset Music if it’s broken

If Music isn’t just bloated but actually misbehaving (crashes, slow, won’t play tracks), a fuller reset helps:

1. Quit Music and force-quit any leftover processes
2. Back up ~/Music/Music/Music Library.musiclibrary
3. Delete:
   • ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Music/
   • ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.MusicAgent/
   • ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Music.plist
4. Restart the Mac
5. Reopen Music — it rebuilds caches and rereads the library

Don’t delete the library file unless you have a backup and are willing to re-sync from iCloud.

Reset stale audio configsCorrupted prefs cause weird sound issues. Sweep can wipe them. Try Sweep free →

Look beyond Music

While you’re cleaning, other audio apps probably have similar buildup. Worth checking:

• ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Podcasts/ — Podcasts cache
• ~/Library/Caches/com.spotify.client/ — if you use Spotify
• ~/Library/Caches/com.tinyspeck.slackmacgap/ — Slack’s cache (audio for huddles)

A general-purpose cleanup tool finds these in one pass. Sweep scans for stale caches across the system and previews everything before clearing — it’s cleanup-focused, not antivirus, but it recovers gigabytes that are sitting in app caches you didn’t know existed.

Specific scenarios

Music is using 60+ GB: most likely downloaded subscription tracks. Bulk-remove from Library → Downloaded.

Music app crashes on launch: corrupted cache. Clear ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Music/ only, leave the library file alone.

“Storage shown” doesn’t match what’s actually downloaded: cache mismatch. Restart Mac.

Music shows downloaded tracks but won’t play them: file location moved or files deleted manually. Update Cloud Library.

Library file is huge (1+ GB): smart playlists with complex rules can grow the library. Audit your smart playlists.

Recently imported music can’t be found: media folder path may have changed. Check Music → Settings → Files.

Downloads keep restarting from zero: corrupted cache. Clear caches, try again.

Family member’s library is on this Mac: Library files are per-user. Each user has their own at ~/Music/Music/Music Library.musiclibrary.

Quick checklist

To clear without losing anything:

1. Back up ~/Music/Music/Music Library.musiclibrary
2. Quit Music and force-quit leftover processes
3. Bulk-remove downloads from Library → Downloaded
4. Clear ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Music/
5. Clear ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.MusicAgent/
6. Set sane auto-download limits in Music → Settings
7. Reopen Music

Most reclaimed storage comes from removing downloads, not clearing caches. Cache cleanup matters mainly when the app is misbehaving.