If an application or game is having issues working on the Galaxy S8 or Galaxy S8+, then it’s a good idea to clear the app cache as well as the app data.
Google gives their Android users a number of ways to troubleshoot various issues that we may come across when using a smartphone or tablet. This is important because as simple as the company tries to make the platform seem, Android is an incredibly complex piece of software with tons of moving parts.
This is why I recently showed you how to wipe the cache partition of the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+, because it’s a good troubleshooting step.
This is a good thing to try if you’re experiencing issues with Android as a whole (such as poor performance, battery life, overheating, etc.). However, if you’re only having issues with one particular application or game, then it doesn’t make much sense to wipe the whole cache partition. Instead, you may want to just clear the app cache and data on the Galaxy S8. The process is simple and that’s what I want to show you how to do today.
Note – This process is two-fold, so I’ll write them up as separate guides down below, but it’s generally advised to clear both cache and data if you’re having issues with an application or game. Wiping the data of an application will reset the data for it. So if you have an account or downloads stored in it, this option will likely erase all of that.
Galaxy S8 Clear App Cache
- Launch the Settings application
- Scroll down and tap on the Apps option
- Locate and tap on the application or game you’re having issue with
- Tap on the Storage option
- Then tap the Clear Cache button
Galaxy S8 Clear App Data
- Launch the Settings application
- Scroll down and tap on the Apps option
- Locate and tap on the application or game you’re having issue with
- Tap on the Storage option
- Then tap on the Clear Data button
- Or, Tap the Manage Storage button
- Then tap on the Clear All Data button
- And confirm you want to delete all of the application’s data
Explanation
So the first thing you will want to do is to try and clear the cache for an application you’re having trouble with. This will only delete temporary files and it does have a good chance of fixing any issues you’re having with it. To do this, we need to launch the Settings application and then scroll down so you can tap on the Apps option. If you have two Apps options (like I show in the video above), tap on the one that has the subtext Default Apps, App Permissions.
From here, you will get a list of all the applications you have installed on your Galaxy S8 or Galaxy S8+. So go ahead and scroll through them until you find the one you’re having trouble with. Tap it and then you want to tap on the Storage option that you see on the next page. You should then see a Clear Cache button on the right side of the screen. Simply tap on it and that should make the button go gray. This means the cache for that app or game has been cleared.
Now would be the time to press the Home button to go back to the Home Screen so you can then try to launch the application or game you were having trouble with. If that fixed the issue(s) then you can just go about your day. However, sometimes clearing just the cache isn’t enough so for those instances you should then clear the application data as well. To do this, we need to get back to the Storage page for the application or game just like we did above.
This time though, you’ll want to look above the Clear Cache button and you should see one of two different buttons there. On an application like the Calculator, I see just a regular Clear Data button and you can just tap that to clear the data for the application. When doing the video though, you can see I tested this with Chrome and instead of a Clear Data button there was a Manage Storage button. So if you see that, you need to tap on it and then tap on the Clear All Data button.
Whichever option you see, the results will be the same. This will make it as if the application or game has been freshly installed so you should then press the Home button to go back to the Home Screen. Then try to launch the app or game again to see if the issue has been resolved.
