How to Clear the Cache on Amazon Kindle Fire

Evan Gower October 28, 2019

If you’re running out of storage on your Kindle Fire or Amazon Fire tablet, don’t rush to expand your storage capacity. You may be able to free up a lot of space and make certain processes run smoother and faster simply by clearing the cache.

How to Clear the Cache on Amazon Kindle Fire

It’s not a complicated procedure, and shouldn’t take more than a few minutes, but it could make a big difference for your tablet. The steps to take will depend on which Fire tablet you have but they’re all detailed in this article.

Why Clear the Cache?

Before you get to deleting things you might not want to, it helps to know what exactly cached data is and why it’s there.

Whenever you run an app or open a website or perform other standard procedures, some temporary data is stored on your device related to that. The point of the data is to provide faster access to the same thing in the future. Think of it as saving a picture of a page from a book so you don’t need to go through the whole book next time you want to read it.

Even if you only visit a website once or you stop using an app, the cached data is still there, waiting to be used again. When enough of this data accumulates, it can become a large chunk of your storage dedicated to things you no longer need.

Now, it’s important to note that the tablet stores cached data as it relates to each individual app, not as a whole. Therefore, you’ll have to clear the cached data for each app individually.

Clearing the Cache on a 5th Generation and Up

At the time of writing, the Fire tablets are on their ninth generation, but this procedure will work for any one of them starting from the fifth generation up. If you purchased a new Fire tablet after 2015, yours probably falls into this category.

The method described here will be to clear the cached data on the Silk internet browser, which is the tablet’s default browser. If you’re using a different browser, you can apply a similar method with that application.

Open the Silk browser app on your tablet;
In the upper-left corner, tap on the hamburger icon (☰) to open the menu;
From the menu, access the “Settings”.
Then, select “Privacy” and tap on “Browsing Data”.
Now you’ll see a series of options of what you can delete. You definitely want to check the box for “Cache” but go through the list and check off all the other things that you might not need. “Cookies and Site Data” for instance, are non-essential.
When you’ve checked all the boxes, tap on the “Clear” button near the bottom and the cached data will be deleted.

That does it for clearing cached data on the 5th gen tablets, and again only for the browser. If you want to clear data for other applications individually, you can do so by accessing the phones “Settings” and then “Applications”. Then, tap on “Manage installed Applications” and look for the app that you want to clear and tap on it, then look for the “Storage” option.

In the storage menu screen, you’ll have the option to “Force Stop” and “Clear Cache”. Sometimes you’ll need to stop the app before you clear its cache.

Clearing Cache on Earlier Models

If you have an older Kindle Fire tablet, you’ll use a slightly different method.

From your home screen, tap on “Web”.
You’ll find the menu button at the bottom of the screen, tap on it and select “Settings”.
You’ll be offered the options to “Clear All Cookie Data,” clear cache, and clear history. Check the ones that you want to clear and then tap “OK”.

It’s a simpler process on those older models. If you want to clear individual app data, you can do so with the method described above.

A Clear Cache Is a Happy Cache

Clearing the caches on any mobile device is good practice, but it’s especially useful if you’re short on storage space. It’s quick and easy and it’s likely to help your tablet run a little smoother as well.

The process is different depending on which generation of Amazon’s Fire tablet you have. For newer tablets, you’ll have to go through a few more steps, especially if you’re clearing browser data. Browser data is the most common thing that people want to clear and it’s where most of the congestion will happen. However, it pays to clear individual apps’ data as well through the device’s settings.

What other ways do you know to clear up some much-needed storage space? If you have a special method, share it in the comments section below!