Discord is an anonymous social media chatting platform app (on browser, desktop and mobile) where users are able to make servers for pretty much any topic or thing they desire just as long as it abides by the services Terms of Service and Community Guidelines. Servers are able to have text chat rooms, voice chat rooms, make various ranks with different permissions for users in the server, including moderators to ensure rules are followed and those who break ToS or community guidelines are purged. The platform was originally made with the intention for people to come together and game more easily but has since expanded into much more such as politics, general interests, hobby groups, memes, content creator communities and just general chatting servers. Owners/Admins can also utilize various bots to implement many other features into their servers.
It is now a very popular platform due to all that it contains and is capable of but that also means there are many bad actors on there who can post terrible things and cause general disruption and harm… just like there are pretty much anywhere.
One thing you may not realize is that Discord caches images on your computer, which in general is a good thing as it enables the application to run faster by not expanding more time loading these same images you have come across, but it can also mean some questionable stuff ends up getting stored on your computer at no fault of your own due to previously mentioned bad actors – if you have seen a picture on discord or been in the same chat channel the picture is in then it will be cached on your computer automatically.
How to Access the Cache
Many people don’t realize this and are completely ignorant to it. You can access the Discord cache (on the Windows 10 operating system at least) by going to your File Explorer which is usually located by default on your taskbar at the bottom of your screen.
From here you can see on the left-hand side a menu and on here there should be a “This PC” option, click that, then under the Devices and Drives section you should see your C drive, it should look similar to the picture below.
Double click your C Drive.
Once opened you should see a file that says “User”, double click on that and then in there double click on your user profile which should have a nickname you recognise.
After this go into the file that says “Appdata”… (note that if you cannot find appdata file you may need to look at the top of the window and click on the “View” menu and then on the right check the “Hidden Items” box and then appdata should appear below).
Once in Appdata double click on the “Roaming” file and then double click the “discord” file from here and then FINALLY double click the “Cache” file that should be located in that list and you will finally be at your Discord photo cache. You may be wondering “these don’t look like photos… how do I view them?” well they are encrypted and cannot be viewed from simply clicking any of the files seen under the “data” files. You may also be wondering if there is a fast way to delete all those cached photo files.
How to View and Clear the Cache
Well there is a two in one solution. What I use to regularly clear out my Discord cache is an easy to use program called CacheMonkey which can be downloaded for free and used entirely for free. You can download and install this program from a website called cachemonkey.app by following the simple instructions.
Once it is downloaded and installed open it up. You should see right in front of you a button that says “scan cache”. Click on that and then wait for it to scan your discord cache. If you are a frequent user of discord you will see that it comes up with a seismic load of pictures in the formerly blank area on the right, many of which you will likely recognise having seen while on discord. These are the photos saved in your discord cache. CacheMonkey lets you view them and also lets you save any you want to a directory and so on.
It also lets you completely clear the cache with ease, simply just click on the “Purge Cache & Dump button” and it will permanently delete the whole load from your computer’s discord cache (make sure Discord is closed while doing this).
Easy! And now you can add Discord to your CacheMonkey and do a Cache wipe at any time you wish. Do note though that when you go back on discord images will instantly be added to the cache again, so if your problem photo keeps coming back try and contact the staff of the problem server and ask them to remove the photo if it is breaking rules or ToS, if they refuse to do so you will either have to avoid the channel the photo is in until the photo is further enough out or they wipe the channel. Failing all else, leave the server.
Note that CacheMonkey can also be used to clean out caches of many other apps and also browsers as well and so it is a very handy all in one tool to clean up your various caches of photos and data, not only does it remove photos you’d rather not have stored, it also frees up space and gives a general refresh to the cache, which can fix other problems, such as lag and slow loading.
So there you have it, it is quite easy and simple one you are shown how to access, view and delete your discord cache. Very sneaky of them to be hiding photos on your computer!
I hope this helped!
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