Pronounced "pre-cashing," it refers to software that downloads data ahead of time in anticipation of its use. For example, when a Web page is retrieved, the pages that users typically jump to when they leave that page might be precached in anticipation. An application might precache files that are commonly called for at some time during a session.

Precaching differs from Web and browser caching, in that precaching implies storing files that are expected to be used, whereas regular caching deals with files already requested by the user. Sometimes, the terms "precaching" and "caching" are used synonymously. See Web cache and browser cache.