My C: drive was creeping toward full, and I hadn’t installed anything new in weeks. The usual suspects — Downloads folder, old games, forgotten installers — were already cleaned out. What I hadn’t checked was how much junk these apps were quietly piling up behind the scenes.

Three apps were hogging the most space: Discord, Spotify, and Adobe. They don’t advertise how much space they’re using, and they don’t make it obvious how to get it back. Here’s exactly where I looked and how much space it freed up.

Discord: The cache folders that quietly fill up

How to find it and clear it manually

Discord doesn’t look like the kind of app that eats up storage. It runs in your system tray; you use it constantly, and it never seems like a storage problem. That changes quickly once you take a look.

Press Win + R or type %APPDATA%\discord, and hit Enter. You’ll find several folders that can quietly grow over time:

• Cache: The main cache folder, where Discord stores temporary data from images, videos, and other media that’s passed through your channels and DMs. This is usually where most of the space goes.
• Code Cache: Stores cached versions of Discord’s JavaScript code. It rebuilds automatically, so clearing it is completely safe.
• GPUCache: Graphics-related cached data. Safe to delete — Discord will rebuild it automatically.
• blob_storage: Holds binary data Discord has cached locally. On older installs, this can get surprisingly large.

Close Discord completely before clearing any of these. Right-click the tray icon and choose Quit, not just close the window. Then delete everything inside each folder (leave the folders themselves). Discord will recreate what it needs the next time it launches.

One folder to leave alone: Local Storage. This holds account preferences and settings data. Clearing it won’t permanently break anything, but you’ll have to reconfigure notification settings and other preferences, which isn’t worth the hassle.

On my machine, the Cache and blob_storage folders together were sitting at just over 1.4 GB. That’s a significant chunk of storage for a chat app that stays minimized most of the day.

There are several other tips and tricks for Discord.

Total recovered on my machine: ~1.4 GB

Spotify: The hidden cache cap you should set today

How to find the cache and stop it from growing unchecked

Spotify caches audio locally to reduce buffering, which makes sense. The problem is how quietly that cache grows, and how little control the app gives you over it.

The cache location on Windows depends on whether you installed Spotify through the website or the Microsoft Store.

For the standard desktop install, head to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Spotify\Data. That’s where Spotify stores its streaming cache. On my system, this had accumulated over 2GB worth of data — mostly tracks I’d played once and never returned to.

You can delete the contents of that data folder manually while Spotify is closed. Spotify will rebuild the cache as you keep listening.

Note that Spotify’s settings only let you change where downloaded offline content is saved, not the streaming cache location. There’s no reliable in-app option to cap the cache size, so manually clearing the Data folder periodically is currently your best option.

If you installed Spotify through the Microsoft Store, not via an .exe, the cache path is buried deeper: navigate to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages and look for a folder starting with SpotifyAB.SpotifyMusic, then follow the path through LocalCache -> Spotify -> Data. The process is the same: shut down the app and wipe the folder contents.

Total recovered on my machine: ~2.3 GB

Premiere, After Effects, and Photoshop each handle it differently

Adobe is a different story. Apps like Premiere Pro or the powerful After Effects can generate gigabytes of cache data in just one editing session.

The biggest source is the Media Cache, shared across Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Adobe Media Encoder. The default location is %APPDATA%\Adobe\Common\Media Cache Files, with an associated database at %APPDATA%\Adobe\Common\Media Cache.

You can delete these folders manually, but it’s easier to clear from inside the app. In Premiere Pro, go to Edit -> Preferences -> Media Cache. You’ll see your current cache location and two options: delete unused cache files or delete all cache files. Start with the first option — it’s the safer choice; it clears out files associated with projects you’ve already closed or exported, without touching anything tied to active work.

After Effects has its own disk cache, separate from the shared Media Cache. Find it under Edit -> Preferences -> Media & Disk Cache. Choose Empty Disk Cache to wipe it. This cache is purely for RAM preview data, so clearing it has no impact on your project files. After Effects will just re-render previews the next time you open those compositions.

Photoshop handles things differently, using scratch disk files instead of a typical cache. If Photoshop has been crashing or running slowly, search your system for files beginning with PST. Those are Photoshop’s temp files and are safe to remove when the app is fully closed.

Total recovered on my machine: ~3.8 GB across Premiere, After Effects, and Photoshop

The final tally

Across all three apps, I cleared just over 7.5GB of space — without uninstalling anything, without touching any project files, and without losing any settings I actually cared about. Discord was the biggest surprise. It doesn’t feel like a storage-heavy app. Spotify’s unlimited cache setting is worth fixing right away. And Adobe’s media cache is worth clearing after every major project.

This isn’t a one-time cleanup. Discord’s cache will fill back up as you scroll through servers and DMs. Spotify will keep caching audio as you listen. Adobe will keep generating previews and media data. It’s worth checking these folders every month or two, and keeping that Spotify cache cap in place so it doesn’t quietly balloon again.

It keeps your storage from quietly disappearing and saves you from another “Why is my drive full?” moment.