Refresh yourself and go hard… when refreshing your browser

Go hard or go home, work hard, play hard… we could keep spouting cliches with ‘hard’ in but we’ll stop. Because the point of this blog is to explain what a hard refresh is and why you may need to do it from time to time. 

So, let’s get a little technical so you can discover exactly how to refresh yourself. When developers are working with websites, editing the design or content in the backend, deep in code mode, sometimes to see the changes you may need to perform a hard refresh. This, although sounding quite serious, is actually just a way for you to access and see the most recent version of the website.

Why do we need to hard refresh our browsers?

When we visit a website our browser will take a copy of that website. This is so that when you revisit that same website it will load much faster. So, if changes have been made to a website since your recent visit you won’t see them, because you’re actually looking at a downloaded version of that page which you previously visited. 

With a hard refresh we can delete that downloaded page, aka a ‘local version’ of the site, and get the most recent version, with all the fancy changes, visible. 

How to perform a refresh

This of course is a little different on each browser as, helpfully, they all have different settings, processes and shortcuts. A bit like iPhone vs Android. So, here’s our breakdown of the most popular browsers and the method of performing a hard refresh to help you navigate your way to refreshed pages. 

Chrome: To reload Chrome on Windows all you need to do is press the ‘Ctrl’ button and either the ‘Reload Button’ or the ‘F5 key’. To reload Chrome on Mac you should press either ‘Command’ ‘Shift’ ‘R’ or ‘Shift’ ‘Reload Button’.

Safari: To reload your tab on Safari you should press ‘Option’ ‘Command’ and ‘E’.

Internet Explorer/Edge: To reload Internet Explorer/Edge you should click either ‘Ctrl ’ and ‘Reload Button’ or ‘Ctrl ’ and ‘F5 Key ’.

Firefox: To reload Firefox on Windows you should click either ‘Ctrl’, ‘Shift’ and ‘R’ or ‘Ctrl’ and ‘F5 Key’. To reload Firefox on Mac type either ‘Cmd’, ‘Shift’ and ‘R’ or ‘Shift’ and ‘Reload Button’.