What does clear data mean? Everything explained

If you have been going through your apps or browsers, you will definitely come across clear data and being a newbie you will try to know and understand what the terms on your mobile app and browser.

This article covers all you need to know on app data and clearing of app data especially on a mobile phone.

What does clear data mean?

Clear data is the process of removing saved information like logins, browsing history, settings or configurations for an app in a mobile phone or the computer.

When you clear data from an app on your mobile phone or computer, you are factory resetting the app back to it’s original state before you start using it.

Clearing data from an app is good and helpful when you are encountering some major issues with your application, but it isn’t something you have to do very often especially on your mobile phone. You can only clear data when your app is misbehaving.

To understand more about this topic, it is quite commendable to know what app data means.

What is app data

App data is a type of storage that stores informations in an app which includes all logins and activities performed in the application. Activities can be browsing history, websites visited, downloads, etc.

For example, once you downloaded and installed facebook app on your mobile phone, there won’t be any data saved in your phone for the Facebook app. If you happen to check the size of the app data on your settings, you will see it be 0kb.

Now immediately you opened the app, logged into your Facebook, there will be an app data for the Facebook app. You can confirm that by going to settings and you will see that the size has gone up from 0kb to 10mb depending.

Your Facebook account and it’s login has already being saved in the app and stores in the Facebook app data which is located inside your cell phone.

The more you use your Facebook app on your cell phone, the more the Facebook app data will be in size compared to when you initially started using the app. From my observation, Facebook app data can reach up to 600mb especially if you are so much into Facebook.

App data can take up a lot of space in your phone internal storage and browsers apps are the main culprit because we perform so many things in our mobile browsers.

As I use opera browser a lot for my day to day browsing, the app data is usually 700mb along with cached files which is 1.35gb in size, it ends up occupying my phone internal storage with a total size of 2.22GB.

what does clear data mean

When I’m running out of storage I will clear the data though I will first transfer all the bookmarks and saved files to another browser or location. If i happen to clear data from the opera browser, then I will be adding 2.22GB to my phone internal storage.

So this is what data app is all about, all the information or activities you performed in terms of using an app on your mobile phone or computer are stored in the app data.

This brings us back to the question of what does clear data mean and why we should clear data.

What does clear data mean?

Clear data is when all the informations and activities performed in an app is wiped out and in turn returning the app back to it’s original state.

You shouldn’t be clearing data from your app especially on browser apps cause you will end up losing all your bookmarks, saved files and settings. You can only clear data when it is very necessary especially when an app is lagging or hanging.

Reasons or need to clear data from an app

App data

The main reason or the need to clear data is when you start having issues with application. Issues like the app taking time to open or load, lots of lagging or hanging and which is major caused when the app data is excessive.

Pretty much common on android phones more than iPhone.

When this start happening to you, the only way to fix the problem is by clearing data from the app. Once you have done that, the app will start functioning like normal.

When an app start crashing: This is another good reason to clear data from an application and from my experience it does help unless the problem is from the phone.

When an app starts to crash unnecessarily, the first things to recommend is to clear cache from the app followed by clearing data if clearing cache didn’t fix the issue. Many a time clearing data from the app do help to fix the problem.

Clear data when running low on storage: This is another reason to clear data and I have done that on few occasions though on my old samsung phone.

Looking at the picture above, you will see that only opera beta browser consumed 2.2GB storage from my internal storage, and if multiplied with other apps which that usually has a data app of 300mb to 400mb, you will find out that these app data are indeed consuming lots of internal storage on my cell phone.

When on low internal storage, you should go ahead and clear data from the apps on your cell phone but remember that you are factory resetting your app.

Is it OK to clear data on apps?

It is very much okay to clear data on apps especially when the app starts to hang, lag or crashing. However, I don’t recommend clearing data on apps very often cause you will be losing saved offline files and bookmarks especially on browser apps.

There’s nothing to fear when it comes to clearing data or cache from an application, when you see the need to do so go ahead and do cause you are in turn helping the app to fix it’s problem.

What will happen if you clear data?

If you clear data on an app, you have removed all saved informations and activities performed on the app. That is to say to clear data from an app means factory resetting the app back to it’s original state. 

When you factory reset your phone, what actually happens?

Normally you will lose everything saved in the phone including all settings and configurations, pictures, documents, videos, apps that you downloaded and installed, etc.

This is how clearing data from a mobile app does. You will lose all settings, logins, informations stored in the app as the app will look like when you first opened it on your mobile phone.

Using the Facebook app as an example. 

When you clear data from your Facebook app, it won’t delete your Facebook account but rather it will remove your Facebook account from the Facebook app.

So after clearing data and opening the Facebook app on your mobile phone, you will have to sign into your Facebook account in order to use the Facebook app.

This is what clearing data does and this is applied to snap chat, instagram, or any app that requires you to login before using the app.

Let say you have a tiktok app and wants to clear data from tiktok app installed on your phone. When you have cleared the data, it will only remove your tiktok account and other activities from the app but all your tiktok videos and friends will all remain intact and untouched.

Once you opened the tiktok app, login into your account, you will see that everything is still intact and nothing was removed.

So this is what will happen if you clear data from a mobile app like the social apps.

If you clear data on browser app, you will lose all bookmarks, browsing history, offline saved files or pages and settings made to the app.

How to clear data on iphone

It is quite unfortunate that iphone isn’t like android where you can easily clear data from an app, the truth is that there’s no way to do so but there’s a simply trick for it.

How to clear data on iphone is by locating the app, press hold on the app and you will see the option to delete the app. Go ahead and delete the app and reinstall it back to your iPhone and all app data for the app will be removed.

This is the only way on how to clear data on iphone unless Apple comes up with the idea of clearing data like android users.

How to clear data on android

To clear data on android, open the settings app and scroll down to apps and tap to open. On the next window locate the app you want to clear it data and open it.

Tap on storage and you will be presented with a lists of options cache and data.

what does clear data mean

Look below your screen and tap on the clear data button. Once you have done that, all saved data will be removed from the application.

Related Questions

Should I clear browsing data?

You should clear browsing data when you have seen that the stored data are very massive and slowing down your app, else there’s no need clearing browsing data.

Does clear data delete everything?

Clearing data doesn’t delete everything but rather it removes everything from the app. In term of browser app, it will remove all browsing history, logins and passwords, bookmarks and saved files, etc.

However, all accounts will never get deleted as you can still login to the app after clearing data on an app.

By now you must have understood what does clear data mean and the need to clear data. This is not something that you should be doing always unless you don’t care about losing your bookmarks, saved files, etc.

Having explained all that you need to know about data and clearing data, I come to the conclusion of the question of the day on what does clear data mean.

About Kennedy

I'm Amaechi Uchenna by name, a mobile tech enthusiast who love writing articles about tips and tutorials especially relating to gadgets.

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