Discord's cache on a Mac: where it is and what to leave alone

By Wapp team ·Published November 2, 2026

Tested on macOS 27.2 on a MacBook Air (Mac16,12, M4), Discord 0.0.420 (measured inside its installer)

Discord keeps its cache on a Mac in ~/Library/Application Support/discord/Cache. That's the one folder Discord's own troubleshooting guide tells you to clear, and Discord builds a new one the next time it opens.

The rest of the discord folder isn't cache. It holds the website data that keeps you signed in, and most of Discord's code, which arrives after you install the app.

Clear the cache

Quit Discord with ⌘Q, as Discord's macOS guide says, and end any Discord processes left in Activity Monitor.
In Finder, choose Go ▸ Go to Folder (⇧⌘G), type ~/Library/Application Support/discord and press Return.
Drag the Cache folder to the Trash.
Open Discord. It downloads what it needs again, so images and servers may load slowly at first.
Empty the Trash when you're sure Discord works. Until then the space isn't free, and you can drag the folder back.

What else is in the discord folder

Discord is an Electron app (a Chromium browser packaged as an app), so most of its folder follows Chromium's layout. We read the rest from Discord's own startup code.

In `~/Library/Application Support/discord`	What it is	Clear it?
`Cache`	Images and other files Discord downloaded	Yes: Discord's guide names it
`Code Cache`, `GPUCache`	Compiled scripts and graphics data, rebuilt on demand	You can, but they're usually small
`Cookies`, `Local Storage`, `IndexedDB`	Website data: what a web app keeps to sign you in	No
A folder named after the version, such as `0.0.420`, with `modules` inside	Discord's own code, downloaded after install	No
`module_data`	Data for those modules	No

For scale, an AI assistant app built on Electron has these Chromium folders on our Mac: Cache 33 MB, Code Cache 5.2 MB, GPUCache 307 kB. Discord's depend on what you've opened.

Leave the rest alone. Deleting it is how Discord's guide has you reinstall the app, and you'd have to sign in again.

The app you download is only a starter

Discord 0.0.420, measured inside its installer, is 539.5 MB on disk, and nearly all of it is browser engine:

Bar chart of Discord’s 540 MB app: the Chromium engine 517.1 MB and everything else 22.4 MB.

The engine is Electron Framework.framework, Discord's copy of Chromium: 517.1 MB, 96% of the app. It's a universal build, for both Intel and Apple silicon Macs, so its copy is about twice the size of Slack's Apple silicon one. Every Electron app ships its own copy.

Discord's own code, in app.asar, is 3.5 MB. Its package.json calls it "Discord Client for Desktop - Bootstrapper". When it starts, it downloads Discord's real code, in modules such as discord_desktop_core, into the version folder in the table above.

So Discord takes three things on a Mac: the 539.5 MB app, the modules it downloads, and its cache and data. We could measure only the first, because Discord isn't installed on our test Mac. To see the other two on yours, run this read-only command, which prints each folder's size in Finder's units:

du -sh --si ~/Library/Application\ Support/discord/*

How we measured

When: November 2, 2026, on a MacBook Air (Mac16,12, M4) running macOS 27.2.
The app. We downloaded Discord.dmg (234,062,073 bytes) from discord.com/api/download?platform=osx, the link in Discord's macOS guide. We measured the app on the read-only disk image with /usr/bin/du -sk and du -sAk, without installing or opening it. The version is from its Info.plist, the architectures from lipo -archs.
The folder's name and the modules' location come from package.json and the startup code in app.asar, read as text. Discord's test builds add their channel's name to the folder.
The AI assistant app's sizes come from du -sh --si.
Once installed, a copy from the disk image takes about what we measured. An app from the App Store can take less: on our Mac, macOS stored those compressed.