How to Clear the Teams Cache (Windows 11, Mac & Mobile)

First: Do You Have New Teams or Classic Teams?

Before you clear anything, check which Teams client you're running, because the two versions store their cache in completely different places and most guides online still give only the classic path. Open Teams and look at the top-left of the window: new Teams shows a plain "Microsoft Teams" title with the search bar centred at the top, and its Settings screen lists a version number beginning 25 or higher. If you were ever shown a "Try the new Teams" toggle and switched it on, you're on new Teams.

The fastest test is the folder itself. Press Win + R, paste %appdata%\Microsoft\Teams and press Enter. If Windows says the folder doesn't exist, you're on new Teams — that's not an error, and it's the single most common reason people get stuck following an out-of-date tutorial. New Teams ships as a packaged MSIX app and keeps everything under its own Packages container instead.

How to Clear the Teams Cache on Windows 11 (New Teams)

There are two ways to clear the new Teams cache on Windows 11 or Windows 10: a built-in Reset in Windows Settings, which needs no file browsing, and a manual folder delete, which gives you more control. Try the Reset first — it's faster and harder to get wrong.

Method 1: Repair or Reset in Windows Settings

Because new Teams is a packaged Windows app, Windows itself can clear its cached data for you. Quit Teams first, then:

1. Open Settings → Apps → Installed apps.
2. Find Microsoft Teams (work or school), click the three-dot menu, and choose Advanced options.
3. Click Repair first. This re-registers the app without touching your sign-in, and it resolves a surprising share of Teams glitches on its own.
4. If the problem survives Repair, click Reset. Reset wipes the app's cached data and preferences and returns Teams to a first-run state — you'll sign in again next launch.

Reset is the closest thing new Teams has to an official "clear cache" button. It does not uninstall Teams and it does not touch anything stored in Microsoft 365.

Method 2: Delete the new Teams cache folder manually

The manual route deletes exactly the same data but lets you keep the app registration intact. Quit Teams completely before you start — closing the window isn't enough, because Teams keeps running in the system tray and Windows won't delete files an app still has open.

1. Right-click the Microsoft Teams icon in the system tray (bottom-right, possibly under the ^ arrow) and choose Quit. If Teams won't quit, end the ms-teams.exe task in Task Manager.
2. Press Win + R, paste the path below, and press Enter:

3. Select everything inside that folder with Ctrl + A and delete it. Delete the contents, not the folder itself. If Windows says a file is in use, skip it and carry on — Teams still isn't fully closed, and the remaining files will rebuild anyway.
4. Restart Microsoft Teams. Expect a slow first launch and a loading spinner while your teams, chats, and avatars re-download.

How to Clear the Teams Cache on Windows (Classic Teams)

Classic Teams keeps its cache in a set of subfolders under one roaming AppData directory, and the standard fix is to empty those subfolders rather than delete the whole tree. Quit Teams from the system tray, press Win + R, and open:

Then delete the contents of these folders: Cache, blob_storage, databases, GPUCache, IndexedDB, Local Storage, tmp, and Application Cache\Cache. Leaving the folders in place and only emptying them avoids the odd "Teams won't start" behaviour some people hit after deleting the parent directory. Restart Teams afterwards.

Worth knowing: Microsoft retired classic Teams for most commercial tenants, so if you're still on it, a Teams problem may be fixed simply by moving to new Teams rather than clearing anything.

How to Clear the Teams Cache on a Mac

On macOS the Teams cache lives inside the app's container folder in your user Library, which is hidden by default and reached fastest through Finder's Go to Folder shortcut. Quit Teams completely first: right-click the Dock icon and choose Quit, then open Activity Monitor and confirm no Microsoft Teams process is still listed.

1. In Finder, press Cmd + Shift + G to open Go to Folder.
2. For new Teams, paste ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.teams2. For classic Teams, paste ~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Teams.
3. Move the folder's contents to the Trash, then empty the Trash.
4. Optionally also clear the shared group container at ~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.com.microsoft.teams, which holds cross-Office cached data. Note this is shared with other Microsoft 365 apps, so only clear it if the basic cache clear didn't help.
5. Relaunch Teams and sign in.

Fixing "Operation not permitted" on a Mac

The "Operation not permitted" error when clearing the Teams cache means macOS is protecting the folder, almost always for one of two reasons. First, Teams is still running — macOS refuses to delete files an active process holds open, so quit it fully and re-check Activity Monitor. Second, if you're deleting from Terminal with rm -rf, Terminal itself needs permission: go to System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access and enable Terminal, then restart Terminal and try again. Deleting through Finder instead of Terminal sidesteps the permission requirement entirely and is the easier route for most people.

How to Clear the Teams Cache in a Browser

Teams in a browser has no cache folder of its own — it stores everything in your browser's site data for teams.microsoft.com, so you clear it the same way you'd clear any website's data. In Edge or Chrome, open Teams, click the padlock or tune icon to the left of the address bar, choose Cookies and site data → Manage on-device site data, and delete the entries for teams.microsoft.com and microsoft.com. Then refresh and sign in again.

A quicker blunt alternative is Ctrl + Shift + Delete to open Clear browsing data, but that clears cached data for every site you use, not just Teams. A hard reload (Ctrl + Shift + R) is worth trying first for minor display glitches.

How to Clear the Teams Cache on iPhone and iPad

iOS doesn't expose a per-app cache control, so clearing the Teams cache on an iPhone or iPad is done inside the Teams app itself. Tap your profile picture → Settings → Data and storage, then tap Clear app data (labelled Clear temporary files in some builds) and confirm.

If that option is missing or the problem persists, offload and reinstall the app: Settings → General → iPhone Storage → Microsoft Teams → Offload App, then reinstall. Offloading removes the app's cached data while keeping its documents; a full delete-and-reinstall removes both. Either way your chats come back from the cloud when you sign in.

How to Clear the Teams Cache on Android

Android gives you a proper OS-level cache control, which makes it the most direct platform of the lot. Open Settings → Apps → Microsoft Teams → Storage (some phones label it "Storage & cache"), then tap Clear cache. This removes temporary files while leaving you signed in.

If clearing the cache alone doesn't fix things, tap Clear storage (or "Clear data") on the same screen. That's the heavier option: it signs you out and resets the app completely, so you'll need to sign in again afterwards. You can also do a lighter clear from inside the app under Settings → Data and storage.

For IT Admins: Clearing the Teams Cache for All Users

There's no tenant-wide "clear cache" switch in the Teams admin center, because the cache is per-user and per-device — clearing it at scale means running a script in each user's context while Teams is closed. The usual approach is a PowerShell script deployed via Intune or Configuration Manager that terminates ms-teams.exe, then removes the contents of $env:LOCALAPPDATA\Packages\MSTeams_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Microsoft\MSTeams.

Two operational cautions. Run it as the logged-in user, not as SYSTEM — a SYSTEM-context script resolves $env:LOCALAPPDATA to the system profile and silently clears nothing. And on non-persistent VDI or FSLogix profiles, the cache is often already discarded at logoff, which makes a mass clear redundant and can add avoidable re-sync load at the next sign-in.

What Clearing the Teams Cache Actually Deletes

Clearing the Teams cache removes local temporary files only — everything that matters is stored in Microsoft 365 and comes straight back. Here's the honest split:

When Clearing the Cache Fixes Your Teams Status (and When It Won't)

A stale cache is a genuine cause of presence bugs, which is why "clear the cache" appears in almost every Teams status troubleshooting thread — but it only fixes one specific class of problem, and it's worth knowing which side of the line you're on before you spend ten minutes on it.

Clearing the cache can fix: a status stuck on Away or Offline after a client glitch, a dot that won't change after you manually set it, a presence state that disagrees between Teams and Outlook, an "Unknown" status, and a status that never recovers after your machine wakes from sleep. In each of these the server has one view of your presence and your local client has another; wiping the cache forces the client to re-register and re-read the real value. If that's your symptom, our guides on Teams status not updating, Teams stuck on Away, and Teams status not showing in Outlook walk through the full ranked fix list, with the cache clear as one step among several.

Clearing the cache will not fix: Teams turning you Away after roughly five minutes of no keyboard or mouse activity, or flipping you to Away the instant you lock your PC. Those aren't bugs and they aren't cached state — they're Microsoft's designed idle behaviour, and Teams is far more aggressive about it than Slack, which waits 30 minutes. You can clear the cache every hour and the five-minute timer will still fire on schedule. See how to keep Teams active for the methods that actually address the timer, and Stay Green On Teams if you'd rather have your Available status held on a schedule from the cloud instead of babysitting your keyboard.

Before You Clear: Three Faster Things to Try

Clearing the cache costs you a slow relaunch and possibly a fresh sign-in, so it's worth thirty seconds on the cheaper fixes first.

If none of those help, clear the cache using the method for your platform above. If the problem returns within a day or two, the cache wasn't the root cause — look at your Outlook calendar, other signed-in Teams devices, or your organisation's presence policy instead.