An application’s cached data get corrupt over time and cause issues like force closes, poor battery life, slow performance and even overheating. Instead of going through the Galaxy Note 9 app by app, this tutorial will walk you through how to wipe the entire cache partition for all of your applications on the Samsung smartphone.
What is the Galaxy Note 9 Cache Partition?
A partition is an isolated section of a storage device. You can think of it as a folder on the smartphone and it’s something that a lot of applications and games leverage to speed up its performance. Each application and game can use the cache partition for a variety of different reasons but the entire goal is to make opening and using it much faster. Web browsers cache images of websites so when you visit them again they can load that image that’s already been downloaded instead of downloading it again.
An application game’s cached data is similar in that it is information (which can be images) that is stored in its own partition on the Galaxy Note 9. So an application can store an image that has already downloaded from the internet and just shows it to you from the internal storage instead of downloading it each time you open it. This cached data can also bits of information that required the CPU or GPU to ramp up and do some work. If that data can be stored in the cache partition then save you battery life.
Note – Wiping the cache partition will not cause you to lose any of the data you have stored on your smartphone. This means your apps, games, videos, photos, settings, and everything else will still be there even though you have cleaned out the cache partition.
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How to Wipe the Galaxy Note 9 Cache Partition?
- Boot the Galaxy Note 9 into Recovery Mode
- Press the Volume Down button until the Wipe Cache Partition option is highlighted
- Press the Power button to perform the wipe
- Watch the progress at the bottom of the screen
- Wait for a second or two until the Recovery Mode menu appears again
- Make sure the Reboot System Now option is highlighted
- Press the Power button to select it
- Then wait again for the Galaxy Note 9 to reboot back into Android
Why Wipe the Galaxy Note 9 Cache Partition?
Just as I mentioned earlier, applications and games can store all sorts of information on this partition. Sometimes this data is to make the software run faster, or better, or by using fewer resources. At the end of the day though, the cache of an app is very useful and it’s something that many operating systems have used over the years. It would be silly for Android to not let these apps store cached data as it provides a better user experience for the person who is using the smartphone.
Since these apps and game can store all sorts of information as their cached data, there can be issues that arise from time to time. There are dozens and dozens of examples out there but I’ll just list a few. There are times when the application developer didn’t write their code properly and it caused the wrong piece of data to be stored in the cache. There are other times when the data has been stored for so long that it starts to become corrupt and/or outdated.
Similarly to when I showed you how to factory reset the Galaxy Note 9, the reason is that sometimes starting fresh can make things run better. Wiping the cache partition of the Galaxy Note 9 is not as extreme doing a factory reset though. You will not lose any of your applications, games, images, videos, settings, or anything else by wiping the cache partition of your Samsung smartphone. The data that does get erased and formatted is just going to get rebuilt when you boot back into Android.
After the cached data has been erased, it may take a bit longer when you first open up your applications or games again. This doesn’t mean it will take minutes for them to open up, but an application that usually takes 5-10 seconds to open up may end up taking 10-15 seconds. That’s because it has recognized the cached data has been deleted and it needs to build that cache back up again. Games may take a bit longer due to all of the images, but again, that doesn’t mean it should take multiple minutes to open up.
So, if you had experienced an overheating issue, slow performance, poor battery life, or anything else out of the ordinary then you’ll want to pay attention. If the culprit was some bad data that was stored in the cache partition then you should see those issues go away now that you have wiped the Galaxy Note 9 cache partition.
Experiencing difficulties with your Device, check out our “How To” page on how to resolve some of these issues.
