Windows: how to delete temporary files to free up disk space?

Is your computer storage about to run out? Aside from causing serious performance issues, this situation can also cause major inconvenience installing important updates, saving new files, and running programs.

In order not to be affected by this fairly common problem, there is a simple solution in Windows that does not require sacrificing relevant content on your device: delete the temporary files that are stored on the hard drive every day.

How to delete temporary files in Windows?

The procedure to get rid of temporary files can be carried out on computers running Windows 10 or Windows 11 operating system. Here are all the steps to follow:

1. Click the Start button from your computer’s taskbar or keyboard
2. Access the Settings panel
3. Go to the System > Storage section
4. Go to the Temporary Files section
5. Select all the file types you want to delete
6. Click the Remove files button to finish.

Among the temporary files that the operating system keeps, we can find the following categories:

1. Windows update log files
2. Recycle Bin
3. Windows Feedback Diagnosis and Error Reporting
4. Non-essential elements of Microsoft Defender antivirus
5. Delivery optimization files
6. Temporary internet files
7. DirectX shader cache
8. Thumbnails of images, videos, and documents