Deleting Google Desktop Cache

February 15, 2005 7:25 AM

How do I delete the Google Desktop cache? I can't find it anywhere!
posted by johnnydark to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

"The easiest way to clear your entire Google Desktop Search index is to uninstall Desktop Search. If you reinstall again later, you'll create a brand-new index."

Google Desktop Support
posted by fourstar at 8:03 AM on February 15, 2005

How convenient - uninstall, then reinstall. I have often wondered this as well and this answer (from Google) is not that helpful. Has anyone hacked around to find in which file they are stored? Can it be as simple as deleting a file?
posted by caddis at 8:24 AM on February 15, 2005

On mine, the data is in:

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Google Desktop Search

Note that there's a chance that they install initialized databases instead of creating them from scratch, in which case just deleting the files would hose the whole installation until you reinstalled.
posted by smackfu at 8:57 AM on February 15, 2005

The location is stored in the registry [view with regedit] as
My Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Google Desktop as the data_dir entry.

Have not tried clearing this directory out though, so good luck if you do.
posted by azlondon at 9:13 AM on February 15, 2005

You can clear individual entries by finding them with the search, then clicking on the remove (I think) link, then checking the boxes next to the entries you don't like, then hitting remove. Or something like that.
posted by Doohickie at 10:00 AM on February 15, 2005