Files & Folders You Can Safely Delete in Windows 11 (2024)

Mitch BartlettJune 5, 2023 Comments (17)

If you’re looking to free space or just simply need to clean the clutter from the hard drive of your Microsoft Windows 11 computer, here is a list of file and folder locations you can safely remove to clear the most space.

Windows Temp Folders

Applications use these folders to temporarily write data. You can safely remove anything in the folder, but you may not be able to delete items that are in use.

Browser Temp Folders

Data from web pages. Cached to make loading time quicker.

Likely safe locations to delete files and folders from:

Microsoft Edge – C:\Users>username>AppData>Local>Packages
>Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe>AC>MicrosoftEdge>Cache
Internet Explorer –C:\Users > username > AppData > Local > Microsoft > Windows > INetCache
Firefox –C:\Users> username>AppData>Local>Mozilla>Firefox>Profiles> randomcharacters.default>cache2>entries
Google Chrome –C:\Users> username>AppData>Local>Google>Chrome>User Data>Default>Cache

Log Files

Files that store data about what certain applications did.

Likely safe locations to delete ONLY FILES THAT END IN “.LOG”.

Old Prefetch Data

Data Windows uses to open commonly used programs faster.

Likely safe locations to delete files and folders from:

C:\Windows > Prefetch

Crash Dumps

Files containing data about what was in memory when applications crash.

Likely safe locations to delete files and folders from:

C:\Users > username > AppData > Local > CrashDumps
C:\ProgramData > Microsoft > Windows > WER > ReportArchive

Update Date

If you’ve updated Windows 11 with all updates, you can lose the update files stored in these locations:

C:\Windows > SoftwareDistribution > Downloads
C:\Windows > SoftwareDistribution > Datastore

Microsoft Office Backups

Office keeps backups of your files in case you need to recover them. You can delete them if you like.

C:\Users > username > AppData > Roaming > MicrosoftWord
C:\Users > username > AppData > Roaming > MicrosoftPowerPoint
C:\Users > username > AppData > Roaming > MicrosoftExcel
C:\Users > username > AppData > Roaming > MicrosoftOutlook
C:\Users > username > AppData > Roaming > MicrosoftAccess

Thanks to Larry Marks for this one.

Surely, I don’t know it all. Others may have locations they regularly clear to free hard drive space in Windows 11. If you have a location that you know about, please share it in the comments section.