Technologies

Slow iPhone? This one-minute task will speed it up instantly

You should be clearing your iPhone cache on a regular basis. Here’s how to do it in Chrome, Safari and Firefox.

If your iPhone has been a little sluggish lately, that doesn’t mean you have to buy the latest iPhone (like the upcoming iPhone 13). You can try clearing your iPhone cache instead. It’s a simple trick to get your iPhone back up to speed. You can also try freeing up space on your iPhone to help it zoom from app to app and whip open browser tabs again.

Typically, visiting a website requires your phone to download information like photos, banners and other data. To help speed up that process, most internet browsers will store some of that data in a cache so it’s easier to retrieve. Think about it like storing a 24-pack of beverages in your fridge so you don’t have to trek to the grocery store every time you want a drink. In small doses, it’s convenient.

Things become less convenient when your browser’s cache gets outdated and the data being retrieved no longer matches the data actually being used on the website. The result? Slower load speeds and wonky website formatting. That’s why clearing your cache can help: It gives sites a fresh start in your browser and frees up some space in your storage.

Note that clearing your cache will sign you out of sites you’re currently logged into. Still, it’s generally worth that mild inconvenience every now and then to keep things moving quickly.

Here are step-by-step guides on how to clear your cache on your iPhone, based on which browser you use.

How to clear your iPhone cache in Safari

Safari is the default browser on iPhones, and you can clear your cache in a few short steps. Note that, starting with iOS 11, following this process will affect all devices signed into your iCloud account. As a result all your devices’ caches will be cleared, and you’ll need to sign into everything the next time you use them. Here’s what to do:

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone.

2. Select Safari from the list of apps.

3. Scroll down and select Clear History and Website Data.

4. Confirm your selection in the popup box.

Then you’re set!

How to clear your iPhone cache in Chrome

Chrome is another popular browser for iPhone users. The overall process for clearing your Chrome cache requires a few more steps, and you’ll need to do things through the Chrome browser itself. Here’s how.

1. Open the Chrome app.

2. Select the three dots in the bottom right to open more options.

3. Scroll down and select Settings.

4. Select Privacy in the next menu.

5. Then select Clear Browsing Data to open up one last menu.

6. Select the intended time range at the top of the menu (anywhere from Last Hour to All Time).

7. Make sure that Cookies, Site Data is selected, along with Cached Images and Files. Finally, hit Clear Browsing Data at the bottom of the screen.

How to clear your iPhone cache in Firefox

If you’re a Firefox devotee, don’t worry. Clearing the cache on your iPhone is pretty straightforward. Just follow these steps.

1. Click the hamburger menu in the bottom right corner to open up more options.

2. Select Privacy in the next menu.

3. Select Settings at the bottom of that menu.

4. Select Data Management.

5. You can select Website Data to clear data for individual sites, or select Clear Private Data at the bottom of the screen to clear data from all selected fields.

What happens when you clear the cache?

Clearing your cache removes the website data your phone stored locally to prevent having to download that data upon each new visit. The data in your cache builds over time and can end up slowing things down if it becomes too bulky. (My phone had about 150 MB of data stored in Chrome when I checked.) Clearing that data gives sites a fresh start, which may fix some loading errors and speed up your browser. However, clearing your cache also signs you out of pages, so be prepared to sign into everything again.

How often do I need to clear my cache?

Most people don’t need to clear their caches more than once every month or two. That’s generally the point where your browser will build up a cache large enough to start slowing things down. If you frequent a large number of sites, you should err on the side of clearing your cache more often.

For more, check out how to FaceTime between an iPhone and Android, how to download iOS 15 on your iPhone right now, and 5 creative, fun photo projects to try with your phone at home.

Technologies

He Got Us Talking to Alexa. Now He Wants to Kill Off AI Hallucinations

British tech pioneer William Tunstall-Pedoe wants to solve the biggest problem in artificial intelligence.

If it weren’t for Amazon, it’s entirely possible that instead of calling out to Alexa to change the music on our speakers, we might have been calling out to Evi instead. That’s because the tech we know today as Amazon’s smart assistant started out life with the name of Evi (pronounced ee-vee), as named by its original developer, William Tunstall-Pedoe.

The British entrepreneur and computer scientist was experimenting with artificial intelligence before most of us had even heard of it. Inspired by sci-fi, he «arrogantly» set out to create a way for humans to talk to computers way back in 2008, he said at SXSW London this week.

Arrogant or not, Tunstall-Pedoe’s efforts were so successful that Evi, which launched in 2012 around the same time as Apple’s Siri, was acquired by Amazon and he joined a team working on a top-secret voice assistant project. What resulted from that project was the tech we all know today as Alexa.

That original mission accomplished, Tunstall-Pedoe now has a new challenge in his sights: to kill off AI hallucinations, which he says makes the technology highly risky for all of us to use. Hallucinations are the inaccurate pieces of information and content that AI generates out of thin air. They are, said Tunstall-Pedoe, «an intrinsic problem» of the technology.

Through the experience he had with Alexa, he learned that people personify the technology and assume that when it’s speaking back to them it’s thinking the way we think. «What it’s doing is truly remarkable, but it’s doing something different from thinking,» said Tunstall-Pedoe. «That sets expectations… that what it’s telling you is true.»

Innumerable examples of AI generating nonsense show us that truth and accuracy are never guaranteed. Tunstall-Pedoe was concerned that the industry isn’t doing enough to tackle hallucinations, so formed his own company, Unlikely AI, to tackle what he views as a high-stakes problem.

Anytime we speak to an AI, there’s a chance that what it’s telling us is false, he said. «You can take that away into your life, take decisions on it, or you put it on the internet and it gets spread by others, [or] used to train future AIs to make the world a worse place.»

Some AI hallucinations have little impact, but in industries where the cost of getting things wrong — in medicine, law, finance and insurance, for example — inaccurately generated content can have severe consequences. These are the industries that Unlikely AI is targeting for now, said Tunstall-Pedoe

Unlikely AI uses a mix of deep tech and proprietary tech to ground outputs in logic, minimizing the risk of hallucinations, as well as to log the decision-making process of algorithms. This makes it possible for companies to understand where things have gone wrong, when they inevitably do.

Right now, AI can never be 100% accurate due to the underlying tech, said Tunstall-Pedoe. But advances currently happening in his own company and others like it mean that we’re moving towards a point where accuracy can be achieved.

For now, Unlikely AI is mainly being used by business customers, but eventually Tunstall-Pedoe believes it will be built into services and software all of us use. The change being brought about by AI, like any change, presents us with risks, he said. But overall he remains «biased towards optimism» that AI will be a net positive for society.

Technologies

Summer Game Fest 2025 Kicks Off Today. How to Watch the Biggest Gaming Trailers of the Year

There’s a whole wide weekend of video gaming happening at the Summer Game Fest. Get the full scoop on how and when to watch.

What started as a pandemic-related substitute for the long-running E3 trade show has turned into the one of the biggest video games event of the year. Fans and journalists will get early looks at the most anticipated AAA and indie video games, and we’ll all get tons of new trailers.

Heavy hitters like Sega, Bandai Namco, Capcom and Square Enix will be showing off their latest and greatest creations, while Xbox is hosting its own full showcase on Sunday, June 8, and Playstation will present the premiere of Death Stranding 2 on Sunday night.

The show kicks off at 5 p.m. ET on Friday, June 6, live from the YouTube Theater in Hollywood Park in Inglewood, California. Fortunately, you can catch all the nonstop gaming action right from your couch. Here’s how to watch Summer Game Fest 2025 live.

How to watch Summer Game Fest 2025 live

Summer Game Fest will be multicast on numerous streaming channels, but the official livestream will be shown on YouTube by the Game Awards. The channel will continue to show the trailer for Summer Games Fest 2025 until the live event begins at 5 p.m. ET (2 p.m. PT) Friday.

Summer Game Fest 2025 schedule

The official Summer Game Fest show kicks off at 5 p.m. ET (2 p.m. PT) on Friday, June 6, with 2 hours of Summer Game Fest Live, which should be chock-full of huge announcements from leading video game developers.

Immediately following the live kickoff event, the independent organization Day of the Devs hosts a showcase dedicated to indie games.

The weekend’s other big highlights include a Wholesome Direct showcase on Saturday at noon ET, focusing on the biggest releases, trailers and announcements for «cozy games,» and the premiere of Death Stranding 2 on Sunday night, which will feature an appearance from legendary game designer Hideo Kojima.

Here’s the full schedule of broadcasts for Summer Game Fest 2025. All times shown are ET. For PT subtract 3 hours.

Friday, June 6

Summer Game Fest Live, 5 p.m.
Day of the Devs, 7 p.m.
Devolver Direct: Ball x Pit: The Kenny Sun Story, 8 p.m.

Saturday, June 7

Wholesome Direct, noon
Women-led games showcase, 1 p.m.
Latin-American games showcase, 2 p.m.
Southeast Asian games showcase, 3 p.m.
Green games showcase, 4 p.m.
Frosty Games Fest, 7 p.m.

Sunday, June 8

Xbox games showcase, 1 p.m.
PC gaming show, 3 p.m.
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach premiere, 10 p.m.

Monday, June 9

Black voices in gaming, noon

Technologies

Apple’s Siri Could Be More Like ChatGPT. But Is That What You Want?

Commentary: Should Siri evolve to become more of a manager than an assistant? Let’s hope Apple can listen to what people want from its voice assistant.

I’ve noticed a vibe shift in the appetite for AI on our devices. My social feeds are flooded with disgust over what’s being created by Google’s AI video generator tool, Veo 3. The unsettling realistic video of fake people and voices it creates makes it clear we will have a hard time telling apart fiction from reality. In other words, the AI slop is looking less sloppy.

Meanwhile, the CEO of Anthropic is warning people that AI will wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs. In an interview with Axios, Dario Amodei is suggesting government needs to step in to protect us from a mass elimination of jobs that can happen very rapidly.

So as we gear up for Apple’s big WWDC presentation on Monday, I have a different view of headlines highlighting Apple being behind in the AI race. I wonder, what exactly is the flavor of AI that people want or need right now? And will it really matter if Apple keeps waiting longer to push out it’s long promised (and long delayed) personalized Siri when people are not feeling optimistic about AI’s impact on our society?

In this week’s episode of One More Thing, which you can watch embedded above, I go over some of the recent reporting from Bloomberg that discusses leadership changes on the Siri team, and how there are different views in what consumers want out of Siri. Should Apple approach AI in a way to make Siri into a home-grown chatbot, or just make it a better interface for controlling devices? (Maybe a bit of both.)

I expect a lot of griping after WWDC about the state of Siri and Apple’s AI, with comparisons to other products like ChatGPT. But I hope we can use those gripes to voice what we really want in the next path for the assistant, by sharing our thoughts and speaking with our wallet. Do you want a Siri that’s better at understanding context, or one that goes further and makes decisions for you? It’s a question I’ll be dwelling on more as Apple gives us the next peak into the future of iOS on Monday, and perhaps a glimpse of how the next Siri is shaping up.

If you’re looking for more One More Thing, subscribe to our YouTube page to catch Bridget Carey breaking down the latest Apple news and issues every Friday.