Epic Games Launcher Cleanup: Manifests, Logs and WebCache

What the launcher keeps on disk

%ProgramData%\Epic\EpicGamesLauncher\Data\Manifests holds one .item file per installed game — a small JSON the launcher reads to know what is installed and where. Delete a game folder manually, though, and the manifest survives: the library keeps offering a game that no longer exists, and the Uninstall button fails because there is nothing left to uninstall. That is the ghost-install problem, and the fix is removing the stale .item file, not reinstalling the launcher.

The rest lives under %LocalAppData%\EpicGamesLauncher\Saved. Webcache is the Chromium profile for the store UI — the same kind of data a browser piles up, on a machine where nobody clears it. Logs holds one text file per launcher session plus numbered backups of the previous ones. Config holds the launcher's own settings; deleting it resets the launcher and buys you nothing except re-login and re-download of settings.

• %ProgramData%\Epic\EpicGamesLauncher\Data\Manifests — one .item per game; a stale one is what keeps a ghost install alive
• %LocalAppData%\EpicGamesLauncher\Saved\webcache — the store's Chromium cache, the biggest quiet grower
• %LocalAppData%\EpicGamesLauncher\Saved\Logs — a text file per session plus backups, safe to delete wholesale
• %LocalAppData%\EpicGamesLauncher\Saved\Config — launcher settings; keep unless you want to reset it
• Game folders themselves — wherever you pointed the install; the manifest's InstallLocation field names the exact path

The cleanup order that works

Uninstall games you no longer play properly, from the library's three-dot menu, so the manifest goes with the game. If a ghost entry remains — library shows the game, folder is gone — close the launcher completely (check the tray icon), delete the matching .item file from Manifests, and restart; the entry disappears. Then shut the launcher again and clear webcache: the folder rebuilds on next start, you sign back into the store, and neither your installed games nor their saves are touched — saves mostly live in Documents or in the games' own cloud.

Logs are pure junk — delete them all, the launcher writes a fresh one on every start. One practical bonus: when the store UI starts freezing or rendering a blank white page after an update, deleting webcache is the standard first fix, because a corrupted Chromium profile is the usual culprit. It is the same pattern as with Teams or Spotify — an app that is secretly a browser gets repaired by clearing its browser data, not by reinstalling.

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