Table of contents: 1. Where to find the AppData folder in Windows 2. AppData: what is this folder, what information is stored in it 3. Why AppData folder is so large 4. How to delete the AppData folder
Where to find the app data folder in winsows
The full name of this folder is Application Data. This is a hidden system folder that exists in the Windows operating system, starting with Windows 7 version.
Each computer user has his own AppData folder, which is located in the user profile. You can find the AppData folder at:
{System_Disk}: \ Users \ {UserName} \ AppData Appdata: what is this folder, what information is stored in it
The AppData folder stores information about the working files of installed applications. These are various configuration files with information about application settings, temporary files for proper program operation, application logs, information about saved application users and sessions. Almost all applications installed on the system have their own folder in AppData, where various data is stored.
To make it clearer, we are going to give you few examples. Office applications, such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and others, store page templates, dictionaries, autocorrect data, and other system information in the AppData folder. Browsers, for example, Google Chrome, store in the AppData folder information about installed extensions, history of visiting pages, cached logins and passwords, and much more.
You can go to the AppData folder either from Explorer or from the “Run” line, if you enter “AppData” as a command.
The AppData folder contains 3 other folders – Local, LocalLow and Roaming. Each of these folders contains its own information:
- This folder stores temporary applications files and their local data, for example, user settings.
- This folder has application buffer data.
- Folder with user data for various applications.
As it was already noted above, the AppData folder is hidden from users by default. Regular users are not supposed to carry out various manipulations with it. However, it is important to be aware that this folder exists and there is some information stored in it. If you need to transfer user information about this or another application from one Windows-based computer to another, you can use data from the AppData folder. Simply copy the information from the desired folder in this section and transfer it to a new computer to the appropriate folder. Similarly, it is convenient to import and export settings, templates, bookmarks etc. Many applications by default do not support the ability to export data, but through AppData this can still be done.
Why appdata folder is so large
If you will take a look at the AppData folder immediately after installing Windows, you will notice that it’s quite small in size — only a few hundred megabytes. But with the installation of each new application and its usage, the AppData folder becomes bigger and bigger. The more programs and games you will have on your computer, the larger will AppData folder become.
At the same time, deleting a program or a game from a computer does not always lead to deleting information from AppData. Most applications when deleting through a standard Windows utility do not erase their data from the folder in question. So it turns out that AppData stores data about some programs that are no longer present on the computer, and this data takes up quite a space on the system drive.
How to delete the appdata folder
As we had already mentioned above, AppData is an important system folder that simply cannot be sent to the Recycle Bin without creating problems for applications operation. But there are several ways to reduce the AppData folder size and prevent it from “growing out”:
- Use the built-in Windows tools to clean the hard drive. Windows 10 has utilities that can help you to delete temporary files. If you go to the list of parameters, after selecting the “System” section and the “Storage” subsection, you can see all drives on your computer.
Click on the system drive to clear it from temporary files. You will see a list of data stored on this drive. Click on “Temporary Files”.
You will be able to choose what you would like to delete. Highlight the necessary partitions (the “Temporary files” section refers to AppData) and click “Delete Files” to erase the information that operating system considers useless.
- Use the Windows 10 “Storage Sense”. With one of the updates, Microsoft has implemented a new feature in the Windows 10 operating system – “Storage Sense”. It can be found in the parameters in the “Storage” section. It is turned off by default. If you enable this feature, Windows 10 will automatically free up drive space, deleting temporary files and information from the Recycle Bin.
- Use third-party applications to inspect and cleanup the AppData folder. There are many third-party applications that you can install to inspect this folder. As part of inspection the program will determine which information in the folder is relevant and used by other applications, and which one is not getting accessed any longer, and can be deleted. For example, the Scanner program handles this task pretty well.
The best way to avoid the AppData folder “growth” is to delete information about the application from it when the application itself is being deleted. That is, you can use various special utilities that remove programs completely, for example, Soft Organizer or Revo Uninstaller.