One of the commonly recommended general troubleshooting techniques is to delete the various cache files on your drive.

Doing so can remove unwanted or corrupt settings that an application otherwise continues to use.When dealing with internet-related symptoms, Apple offers similar advice: Trash your cache!

In particular, Apple Support advises going to the Library/Caches folder of the home directory and deleting its contents. This is not the totality of Apple’s advice when dealing with internet-related problems, but it is a key component.

There are other ways to delete cache files beyond dragging them to the trash in the Finder. In particular, several third-party utilities will delete cache files with little more than a click of the mouse. In addition, they offer options as to what subsets of your caches you might want to delete.

Two such utilities are Cocktail (Tiger edition/Leopard edition) and Leopard Cache Cleaner. However, be warned: if you’ve updated to Mac OS X 10.5.3, make sure you also update to the latest versions of these utilities. Both of them have new versions, required for compatibility with Mac OS X 10.5.3. For example, Cocktail 4.1.1, released right after OS X 10.5.3, “fixes a bug causing Mac OS X 10.5.3 to freeze during clearing of the system caches and addresses compatibility issues with Automator 2.0.1.”