Caching is typical browser behavior. Whenever you visit a website, it downloads the files and keeps them. So next time you visit the same site, it doesn’t download those files again. Technically, every site can tell the browser when to download those files again. So if the website changes, your browser will not notice. In this post, we will learn how to refresh and hard-refresh your web page in Edge, Chrome and Firefox to see the changes.
Refresh and Hard Refresh web page in a browser
We will cover the following topics:
- Simple Refresh
- Hard Refresh
- Server Cache
- Force Clear Browser Cache
1] Simple Refresh in Browser
When you press the F5 key on your keyboard when the browser is open, it sends a request to the server with an If-Modified-Since header. If the website has set the cache expiry date high, the browser will load the site from the cache.
2] Hard Refresh in Browser
With a Hard Refresh, the browser ignores the cache and re-downloads everything. To do a Hard Refresh, press Ctrl+F5 or, while holding Ctrl, click the Refresh button near the address bar. You can also press Ctrl+Shift+R.
It works in Microsoft Edge, Chrome and Firefox too.
3] Server Cache
Here is a deal. The server may ignore the no-cache header and send a server-side cached page. Thus even Ctrl+F5 may return an old version of the page if the server ignores the no-cache header. There isn’t much you can do about server caching, since many websites use it to speed things up. You may only see the new version when the webmaster clears the server cache.
4] Force Clear Browser Cache
If a hard refresh doesn’t work, even though you can see a new version of the site in a different browser, the browser may be behaving unpredictably. The only fix is to clear the browser cache in your browser settings.
In Edge (Chromium), Chrome and Firefox, you can choose to delete cache for a specific website.
You can also use the “Developer Tools” console in Google Chrome to get an Empty Cache & Hard Reload option. To delete the cache, you need to choose Applications > Clear Storage > Clear data.
How do I Hard Refresh my browser?
Hard refresh can fix the loading issues of a web page or website. When you hard refresh a web page or website, your browser bypasses or clears the cache and then loads the website or web page. If you are having issues loading websites because of a bad or corrupted cache, a hard refresh may fix it. Usually, F5 reloads or refreshes a web page or website in almost all web browsers. To hard refresh, press the Ctrl + F5 keys.
What are Refresh and Hard Refresh?
A simple refresh may not work if you are having issues with a particular web page or website because of a corrupted cache. During a normal refresh, the browser loads the website from the cache. Instead, a hard refresh may work because it bypasses or clears a particular website’s cache and reloads it.
TIP: Google Chrome browser includes a feature that lets you Normal Reload, Hard Reload or Empty Cache and Hard Reload a web page. You might want to take a look at this post.
Hope you find this tip useful.
Read next: How to search open tabs in Edge, Chrome, Firefox, Opera browsers.
