The disclosed embodiments relate to techniques for managing a local cache on a computing device that stores content items for an online content-management system. These techniques generally operate by gathering information that is available on the computing device (such as information about user actions, information about which applications are executing, and information about the location of the computing device) and using this information to identify relevant content items that are likely to be accessed in the near future. This enables the system to perform cache-management operations at the local cache to facilitate rapidly accessing the relevant content items through the local cache.