How to clear the Teams cache on a Mac

Before you start: is it the right fix?

Microsoft is specific about this. Clearing the cache is a targeted step for a small number of problems with the Teams app on your Mac, not a first step for everything. It does not fix missing messages, chat history that will not load, a channel or team that does not appear, or wrong notification and unread counts, and it deletes the diagnostic logs needed to find the cause of those. If that is your problem, report it before clearing anything.

New Teams or classic Teams?

The two keep their files in different places. This lists whichever of the two folders exists on your Mac:

ls -d ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.teams2 ~/Library/Application\ Support/Microsoft/Teams 2>/dev/null

A path ending in com.microsoft.teams2 is new Teams; one ending in Microsoft/Teams is classic Teams.

Clear the cache in new Teams

1. If Teams is running, right-click its icon in the Dock and choose Quit, or press Command-Q.
2. Open Terminal, from /Applications/Utilities.
3. Run these two commands, pressing Return after each:

rm -rf ~/Library/Group\ Containers/UBF8T346G9.com.microsoft.teams
rm -rf ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.teams2

4. Open Teams again.

rm -rf deletes outright, with no Trash. To keep a way back, go to each folder with Shift-Command-G in Finder instead (~/Library/Group Containers and ~/Library/Containers), drag the Teams folder named above to the Trash, and empty the Trash once Teams works again. Both commands remove the whole folder, not only a cache inside it. To see how much they hold first:

du -sh ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.teams2 ~/Library/Group\ Containers/UBF8T346G9.com.microsoft.teams 2>/dev/null

Clear the cache in classic Teams

1. Quit Teams from the Dock, or press Command-Q.
2. Open Terminal, and run:

rm -r ~/Library/Application\ Support/Microsoft/Teams

3. Open Teams again.

The Finder route works here too: Shift-Command-G, go to ~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft, and drag the Teams folder to the Trash.

What to expect afterwards

Teams takes longer than usual to open the first time, because it has to rebuild its cache files. As you use it, the cache grows back, so this is a fix for a misbehaving app rather than a lasting way to free space. On the Mac RefreshYourMac was built on, the copies of Teams' own pages it keeps to open faster took 388 MB on their own. For the other caches on a Mac, see how to clear the cache on a Mac.

Where the app comes in

In the download edition, RefreshYourMac's Electron App Caches finds the web caches new Teams keeps inside its container: its page cache, compiled code and graphics caches, and the copies of its own pages it fetches again the next time it runs online. Your sign-ins, settings and the app's data sit beside them and are never touched. Sandboxed App Caches covers the Caches folder inside the same container. Both are rated Safe for auto removal but are never cleaned on a schedule, and both list a cache only when nothing has written to it on the last eight days you used the Mac and no app has it open. If you use Teams every day, it will not be listed, and Microsoft's steps above are the way. Neither category is in the Mac App Store edition. If you have removed Teams altogether, see the leftover files after uninstalling an app.