How to force refresh without cache in Google Chrome? [duplicate]

Does Chrome have an equivalent to Firefox's Ctrl+F5 refresh? I can't seem to find one. I changed my gravatar last night, and I can see the new one in Firefox after a Ctrl+F5 refresh, but Chrome seems to be stubbornly hanging on to the old Gravatar. I guess I could manually clear out the cache, but if there is a keyboard command to do it I'd like to know what it is (since it would be helpful for web development too).

88.1k 64 64 gold badges 266 266 silver badges 308 308 bronze badges asked Dec 31, 2009 at 15:29 4,624 5 5 gold badges 25 25 silver badges 23 23 bronze badges

CTR + R then CTRL + F5, once or twice - usually sorts the problem out. Or disable cache in Developer Tools -> Sprog (botom right) -> Network - Disable Cache.. reload the page and try disable that.

Commented Jan 23, 2012 at 17:19 Great new feature added to Chrome for forcing a hard refresh - superuser.com/a/512833/92862 Commented Nov 30, 2012 at 12:46 Commented Oct 5, 2018 at 21:37

11 Answers 11

Chrome documentation states that Ctrl + F5 or Shift + F5 should do "Reloads your current page, ignoring cached content. "

If it is not working, you can file a bug report, but it looks like quite a few other people are having the same issue.

[Existing bug log on this issue] Closed as a duplicate, the issue remmains:

160 3 3 silver badges 16 16 bronze badges answered Dec 31, 2009 at 15:36 William Hilsum William Hilsum 117k 19 19 gold badges 184 184 silver badges 266 266 bronze badges

Looks like it may be partly Gravatar's fault. In the header for my image, they are sending Last-Modified: Fri, 20 Jun 2008 12:25:23 GMT . I think this is either the date I uploaded my old Gravatar, or the date I signed up for Gravatar. The browser must be seeing that and thinking "oh, this new file has the same last-modification date, so I'll just use the cached one still." It's a bug if Chrome is doing that on a refresh ignoring cache, but it's a bug for Gravatar to send the wrong last-modification as well. I've contacted both parties. :)

Commented Dec 31, 2009 at 16:16

I load scripts asynchronously from javascript, and Chrome seems to continue to use cached versions even after ctrl-f5, etc. Clearing the cache works. But another solution is to open an Incognito window (ctrl-shift-n), as it will Incognito mode will not use the cache.

Commented Sep 20, 2011 at 7:36

Haha Chrome is super-cached, the only way I can overcome it is hitting Shift + F5 at least two times (really).

Commented Jun 4, 2012 at 10:15

Chrome team should be embarrassed at such a bug sitting in the bug queue for over 2 years. I am very disappointed.

Commented Oct 9, 2012 at 10:46 Definitely not working. Chrome can just suck so badly some times. Commented Jun 18, 2013 at 17:43

In the opened developer tools ( Ctrl + Shft + I or ⌘ + ⌥ + I ):

Select the Network tab
Activate Disable cache check-box.
DO NOT CLOSE Developer tools - otherwise cache is re-enabled.

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510 1 1 gold badge 6 6 silver badges 12 12 bronze badges answered Mar 29, 2012 at 20:29 2,241 1 1 gold badge 13 13 silver badges 2 2 bronze badges Doesn't work for me, had to use incognito. Commented Oct 18, 2012 at 14:48 But why is there no short-cut key to trigger this! Commented Nov 12, 2012 at 16:32

Note the cache is only disabled while Developer Tools are open. If you close it, your cache is active again.

Commented Dec 6, 2012 at 16:15

Even with activated Disable cache check box and open developer tools there still seems to be a difference between F5 and Shift+F5. An ajax call on my web page behaves differently, depending on the sort of refresh and I do not yet understand why.

Commented Dec 17, 2015 at 14:52

In the newer developer tools (can be triggered by F12, too) the "Disable cache" setting can be found in the Network tab.

Commented Apr 27, 2016 at 17:35

On a Mac, it's Shift+Command+R, or holding down Shift while clicking the reload button (as opposed to Command+R or a normal click for a regular refresh).

Some more details:

For Shift+Command+R, cache is simply ignored and resources are requested like no cache existed.

For Command+R, Chrome will issue If-Modified-Since or Etag requests to the web server, even for things that are actually cached. For most, if not all, content the server should then respond with 304 Not Modified . This is true for most, if not all, modern browsers.

The only way to force relying on the cache (without the browser even asking for possible changes) seems to be clicking a link on the web page, or by following a bookmarked link, or by going into the URL location bar and hitting Return there (Command+L, Return).

However: a longstanding known issue in Chrome, Chrome Forced Refresh does not ignore cache (and the more recent Reload/Refresh does not refresh), or maybe actually a feature in WebKit, Dynamically inserted subresources aren't revalidated even when the containing document is reloaded, makes Chrome not clear ALL related caches when using the above methods. A Chromium developer explains:

The network tab of the developer tools show a waterfall of all resources as they are loaded. There are two vertical lines at the right hand side. one of them is labeled "Load event fired" on hover. Anything loading after that point is not officially part of the page (a page can keep issuing requests for hours) [. ] so it will NOT be "refreshed" with any combination of f5. This is by design.
[. ]
Caching [of any resource, before and after the "Load event fired" line] is determined by the HTTP headers of the response, not by the time the request was issued.

Chrome DevTools' Disable Cache invalidates the disk cache (great for developing!), but.. only while devtools is visible.