How to Clear the Apple Podcasts Cache on Mac

The Podcasts app on your Mac is using 60 GB of disk space. You haven’t downloaded that many episodes — most of what you listen to streams. Where is all that storage going, and how do you get it back without nuking your subscriptions?

The answer is buried in the way the Podcasts app caches data. It keeps every episode you’ve ever played (even partial), every artwork image, every transcript, plus its own internal metadata database. Cleared in the wrong way, you can lose your library. Cleared correctly, you can reclaim 90% of that space.

Here’s exactly what to clear and what to leave alone.

Where Podcasts stores its data

Podcasts data is split across three locations:

Caches — at ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.podcasts/. Pure throwaway data. Always safe to delete. Rebuilt on next use.

Group Container — at ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.podcasts/. This contains both your subscription database AND a cache subfolder. The database (Documents/MTLibrary.sqlite and friends) holds your subscriptions, queue, and listening progress. Don’t touch that. The Library/Caches subfolder inside the group container is fair game.

Preferences — at ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.podcasts.plist. Tiny. Contains app settings. Safe to delete; just regenerates with defaults.

Downloaded episodes — managed by the app, not directly stored as standalone files in a way you’d recognize. Best removed through the Podcasts app itself.

The big space hog is usually the group container’s cache and downloaded episodes.

Method 1: clear from inside the Podcasts app

The cleanest way. You don’t have to touch any folders.

1. Open Podcasts
2. Podcasts → Settings → General
3. Look at how many shows you have downloaded

To remove individual downloads:

1. Click Library in the sidebar
2. Pick a show
3. Find episodes with the download badge
4. Right-click → Remove Download

To bulk-remove downloads:

1. Click Downloaded in the sidebar
2. Cmd+A to select all visible episodes
3. Right-click → Remove Download

Episodes are removed from disk but stay in your library — you can re-download anytime.

To stop accumulating downloads:

1. Podcasts → Settings → Advanced
2. Look for auto-download settings and storage limits

Set “Save Episodes” to a specific number rather than “All Played” — say, “Most recent 5” — to keep storage in check automatically.

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

Method 2: clear caches manually

For deeper cleanup beyond what the app exposes:

1. Quit Podcasts (Cmd+Q)
2. Activity Monitor → search “podcasts” → force-quit anything left running
3. Open Finder, hit Cmd+Shift+G (Go to Folder)
4. Paste: ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.podcasts
5. Drag everything inside to Trash
6. Repeat for: ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.podcasts/Library/Caches/

Don’t delete the cache folders themselves. Delete only the contents inside them. The app expects the folders to exist when it relaunches.

Reopen Podcasts. The first launch may be slow as it rebuilds cached data, then performance returns to normal.

What NOT to delete

These contain your actual library data:

• ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.podcasts/Documents/
• ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.podcasts/Library/Database/

If you delete these, you lose your subscription list, queue, listening progress, and any custom settings. They sync from iCloud if you have Sync Subscriptions on, but recovery isn’t always perfect.

If you’re not sure what something is, don’t delete it. Just clear the Caches subfolder and let it be.

Method 3: reset the entire app (nuclear option)

If Podcasts is so broken that you don’t care about local state and want to start fresh:

1. Quit Podcasts
2. Sign out of iCloud (so you don’t accidentally sync the broken state to other devices first) — actually, wait
3. Make sure your subscriptions are synced to iCloud. They should be by default.
4. Delete:
   • ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.podcasts/
   • ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.podcasts.plist
   • ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.podcasts/
5. Restart the Mac
6. Open Podcasts — it’ll appear empty
7. Wait for iCloud sync to repopulate your subscriptions

This is the deep reset. Expect 2-15 minutes for everything to come back depending on library size.

How much space will you reclaim

In testing, a Mac with 50 podcast subscriptions and casual listening for two years had:

• Caches folder: ~2 GB
• Group container caches: ~3 GB
• Downloaded episodes: ~40 GB
• Database: ~50 MB

Removing all downloads and clearing caches reclaimed 45 GB. Just clearing caches without removing downloads reclaimed 5 GB.

If you’re hitting a “low disk space” warning, downloads are usually the culprit. Bulk-remove from the Downloaded section in the app.

Auto-cleanup settings

To prevent this happening again:

Podcasts → Settings → Advanced:

• Set “Save Episodes” to “Most recent X”
• Enable any “remove played episodes” option that’s available

Podcasts → Settings → General:

• Disable auto-download for shows you stream rather than download
• Use “Notify me of new episodes” instead of auto-download for low-priority shows

These keep storage in check without you having to think about it.

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

Use a cleaning tool to find more

Caches accumulate across many apps, not just Podcasts. After clearing Podcasts, you might find Music, Mail, Photos, and your browsers have similar buildup.

Sweep scans for stale caches across the system and clears them with a preview before any deletion. It’s cleanup-focused, not antivirus — it can’t fix Podcasts bugs themselves, but it can recover gigabytes of space sitting in caches you didn’t know existed.

Verify space recovered

After clearing, check System Settings → General → Storage. The Podcasts entry should be smaller. If it’s not, the cache files may not have actually deleted — make sure you emptied the Trash.

Common mistakes

Clearing Trash too soon: if you accidentally deleted something important, it’s gone. Wait at least until you’ve confirmed Podcasts works correctly post-cleanup before emptying.

Deleting ~/Music/Podcasts/: this folder doesn’t exist on modern macOS — Podcasts data lives in Library, not Music. If you find a ~/Music/Podcasts/ folder, it’s leftover from old iTunes and you might not actually need it.

Deleting while Podcasts is running: causes errors and partial deletion. Always quit first.

Deleting the database file: loses your library. Make sure you’re only deleting Caches subfolders.

Specific scenarios

Mac is full and Podcasts is the biggest user: bulk-remove downloads from the Downloaded section. That’s where most of the space lives.

Podcasts won’t open / crashes on launch: clear ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.podcasts/ only, then try opening.

Auto-downloads keep filling the disk: change “Save Episodes” setting to a smaller number.

Some episodes won’t delete from Downloaded: app glitch. Quit Podcasts, restart Mac, try again.

Storage shown in Settings doesn’t match what’s in Podcasts: cache mismatch. Restart the Mac to refresh.

Quick checklist

To clear cache without losing anything:

1. Quit Podcasts and force-quit any leftover processes
2. Bulk-remove downloads from Library → Downloaded
3. Clear ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.podcasts/
4. Clear ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.podcasts/Library/Caches/
5. Set auto-cleanup limits in Settings → Advanced
6. Reopen Podcasts

For most people, step 2 alone reclaims most of the space. The cache clearing is for edge cases where the app is acting weird.