How To Safely Delete Temporary Files In Windows 10

Deleting the temporary files is one of the best ways out there to free up some significant amount of free space on your Windows operating system.

Long time Windows users likely know how to manually delete temporary files without the help of third-party PC cleaning utilities like CCleaner.

There is an easy and safe method to delete temporary files in Windows 10. You can use the Settings app to safely clear all temporary files in Windows 10 without installing additional software. Here is how to use the Settings app to safely delete temporary files in Windows 10.

Deleting temporary files in Windows 10

Step 1: Open the Settings app by clicking its icon in the left pane of the Start menu or using the Windows logo, and I keyboard shortcut.

Step 2: In the Settings app, navigate to System > Storage page.

Step 3: With default settings, the Storage page displays the drive where Windows 10 is installed. Click on the Temporary files option present just below the Windows 10 drive name and letter.

If you cannot see the Temporary files option, click the Show more categories link and then click Temporary files.

As you can see in the picture above, just below the Temporary files entry, Windows 10 displays the space used by temporary files. On my PC, temporary files are using a whopping on 11.5 GB. Note that Windows 10 takes into account of space used by Downloads folder, Recycle Bin, the previous version of Windows (Windows.old folder), and temporary files folder while calculating the size of temporary files.

Step 4: Clicking on the Temporary files displays all types of temporary files on the Windows 10 installation drive. Here, you can safely select Delivery Optimization Files, Windows upgrade log files, Thumbnails, Microsoft Windows Defender Antivirus, Temporary Internet Files, Windows error reports and feedback diagnostics, and DirectX Shader Cache.

Please don’t select the Downloads option as doing so will remove all files in the Downloads folder.

Step 5: Click on the Remove button to delete selected temporary files.

If you see the confirmation dialog, click Yes or OK button to begin deleting files.

The traditional way of manually cleaning temporary files

Step 1: Open the Run command box by simultaneously pressing Windows logo and R keys.

Step 2: Type %temp% and then press Enter key to open the Temp folder containing temporary files.

Step 3: Select all files and folders and then click the Delete key to delete all temporary files. It’s a good idea to move temporary files to the Recycle Bin and permanently delete them after a few days so that if a program or Windows doesn’t work correctly after deleting temporary files, you can restore them.