How to hard refresh in Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari

01Hard refresh shortcuts for every browser

Every shortcut below comes from the browser maker's own keyboard shortcut list, except Safari's, which Apple doesn't list anywhere.

On a Mac, Cmd+Shift+R works in Chrome, Edge and Firefox. Safari is the odd one out, and it catches a lot of people. In Safari, Cmd+Shift+R opens Reader, the stripped-down reading view, so it looks like something happened when nothing was reloaded at all. Safari calls its hard refresh Reload Page From Origin. It's Option+Cmd+R, and you'll find it in the View menu if you hold down Option while the menu is open.

A plain refresh (F5, Ctrl+R or Cmd+R) is not the same thing. The browser is still allowed to reuse files it already has, which is exactly what you're trying to avoid.

02How to hard refresh on a phone

Phones don't have one. Chrome on Android and Safari on iPhone offer no shortcut or menu item for a hard refresh, so the closest you can get is clearing the cache, which the next section covers. Pull-to-refresh is an ordinary reload.

03What does a hard refresh actually do?

A hard refresh reloads the page and asks the website for every file again, instead of using the copies in your browser's cache. It also skips the site's service worker, the background script some web apps use to serve pages offline. It doesn't touch your cookies, saved logins or anything a site stored about you.

That last part matters more than people expect. The cache holds the page's code, styles and images. When a site ships an update and your browser keeps serving last week's JavaScript next to this week's HTML, things break in odd ways: buttons that do nothing, a layout that's half old and half new, a "something went wrong" that nobody else can reproduce. A hard refresh fixes that, and it's the first thing I'd try for any "it looks wrong" problem.

It does nothing for problems that live in your account or your session. If you're stuck in a login loop or getting an error that names your account, the cause is somewhere a hard refresh can't reach. Doing it five times won't help. Clearing cookies, or a teammate fixing something on the server, will.

04When a hard refresh isn't enough, clear the cache

Clearing the cache deletes every file your browser saved from websites, for the time range you choose, so every site loads fresh next time. It's the bigger hammer, and the one to reach for when a hard refresh didn't help or you're on a phone.

The trap is the checkbox next to it. Clearing "cookies and other site data" signs you out of websites, and many people tick everything because it's quicker. If you only want a fresh copy of the site, tick cached images and files and leave cookies alone.

Pick a time range that covers the problem. "Last hour" is often enough if the site broke today, and it keeps the rest of your browsing fast.

05Hard refresh, clearing the cache and clearing cookies compared

The three get used interchangeably in support replies, and they do very different things.

My rule of thumb is to work down the table one column at a time and stop as soon as the problem is gone.