What is Visual Studio's Font Cache folder?

Question

I started playing around with an app called WinDirStat today and I have noticed that this folder:

C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Visual Studio\Font Cache\

...takes up to 10GB on my computer, containing font files. Does anyone have any idea what this folder is for and if it is safe to delete it?

10GB is too much and the folder name with "cache" in it makes me want to delete it...

Answer 1

OK. I have found what causes this.

I had a WPF demo project in VS2012 that had that particular font included in it and it had been configured to copy it in the output directory. Turns out that VS will copy the font files in the cache folder every time:

• You open a new WPF project that has a font file included in it (at least when configured to copy it in the output directory).
• You include a new font file in the WPF project.

The thing is that it doesn't delete them in the end (when you close VS).

I don't know if the font cache service (that I have some difficulty locating right now) should do that, but apparently no-one does on my machine for some reason and for quite some time... These files must have been accumulating for over a year now...

I have also deleted the folder contents without seeing any problems.

10GB less! :)