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Safe Mode and Clear Cache in BeamNG.drive: what each does, what neither does, and the order to use them

· 3 min read · ModsDrop

Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk 2018-2022
Pictured: Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk 2018-2022, from the ModsDrop library.

Two buttons in the BeamNG.drive launcher solve more mod problems than anything inside the game: Launch in Safe Mode and Clear Cache. They are also the two things support will ask whether you tried. Here is exactly what each does, what it does not do, and the order to use them in.

Safe Mode

Safe Mode starts the game with every mod deactivated and the settings at their defaults for that session. Your mods folder is untouched: nothing is deleted, nothing is moved, and when you start normally again the mods come back exactly as they were. It exists to answer one question: is the problem in the game, or in something I added?

If a crash, a missing HUD, a black screen or a broken vehicle selector disappears in Safe Mode, a mod or a setting is the cause, and the Mod Manager’s deactivate-all-then-reactivate-in-halves routine finds which one. If the problem is still there in Safe Mode, no mod is to blame; the next steps are Clear Cache, then verifying the game files through Steam.

After the 0.40 update, Safe Mode is particularly useful for one category: UI app mods. The update removed old interface building blocks, and a HUD app built on them can take the whole interface down with it. In Safe Mode the interface works; outside it, it does not; the culprit is in the ui/ folder of one of your zips.

Clear Cache

BeamNG converts textures, compiles shaders and builds data structures the first time it needs them, and stores the results in a cache folder inside the user folder. The cache makes the second load of every map and car fast. It also goes stale: after a game update, after replacing a mod with a newer version of itself, or after a crash in the middle of a first load, the cache can hold data that no longer matches the files. Symptoms are textures that are wrong on one car only, a map that loaded once and now crashes, or a mod update that “did not take”.

Clear Cache deletes that folder. The next start rebuilds it, which makes the first launch afterwards slow and the first load of each map slow again; that is expected and happens once. Your mods, settings, saved configurations and Career progress are not in the cache and are not affected.

What neither button does

The order to use them

  1. Safe Mode first. It costs nothing and tells you whether to look at mods or at the game.
  2. Clear Cache second, if the problem appears with and without mods, or right after a game or mod update.
  3. Verify game files in Steam third (right-click the game, Properties, Installed Files, Verify). This repairs the game’s own files and leaves the user folder alone.
  4. Reinstall last, and almost never. Reinstalling the game does not clear the user folder, so a problem caused by a mod or a cache survives a reinstall. People reinstall three times before trying Clear Cache once.

Where the folders are

The user folder, with the mods, the cache and your settings, is by default under %LOCALAPPDATA%\BeamNG.drive\ with one subfolder per game version; the launcher’s Manage User Folder opens the current one. The game’s installation folder under Steam holds only the game itself. Nothing you do with the two launcher buttons touches the Steam folder, and nothing you put in the Steam folder counts as a mod.

A note on the version folders

Each game version keeps its own cache, so a cache problem in 0.40 cannot come from 0.39’s folder. Old version folders can be deleted once you are sure you will not go back; they can be several gigabytes each, and the mods inside them are the only thing worth copying out first.

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