Internet browsers are a type of software that we use almost constantly today. Both on desktop computers and mobile devices, these programs help us to move around the network in the best way. Here we can make use of such powerful and well-known solutions as Firefox, Chrome or Edge. We must also know its functions and elements such as tabs, extensions, cache, etc.
As you will surely already know first-hand, the developers of these software solutions take special care in their projects. The main reason for all this is obvious, and it is that they have hundreds of millions of users all over the world. Therefore, they put at our disposal all the necessary functions to navigate in the best way, and also their updates are constant.
These are in charge of correcting the errors that are detected as time passes. In the same way, this is the way in which we get the most recent tested and released functions, in addition to improving the existing ones. But despite all this, it is also true that to get the most out of these programs, experience is also key. With this is what we want to tell you is that as we use them, we learn to navigate in a more fluid and effective way thanks to certain somewhat more hidden functions.
Serve as an example what precisely we are going to see in these lines. Specifically, we are going to talk to you about how to make use of the so-called forced refresh or hard refresh in the most important web browsers that there are right now.
What is forced refresh or hard refresh in browsers
Something that possibly more than one of you have experienced when using these programs that we are talking about, is that sometimes a website does not behave as expected. This can translate into multiple somewhat strange behaviors, such as the lack of certain content, the appearance of outdated information, or even the total blocking of the website. In order to solve these problems, what we usually do is reload the page in a conventional way.
That is something that the vast majority of us know how to do, we have even had to do many times. When refreshing a certain web page, just press the F5 key. In the same way, browsers also present us with a direct access button to this functionality that is usually located next to the address bar of the program.
The problem comes when this refreshment functionality that we are talking about does not work. We know that the system has not worked because the page continues to show obsolete content or is half loaded. So no matter how much we refresh it, we cannot show the updated content.
It is precisely here where the functionality that we want to talk to you about in these same lines will come into play. Specifically, we refer to the possibility of using the aforementioned forced refreshment or hard refresh. This will help us to solve the problem of the obsolete loading of data from internet web pages . With this in mind, what we are actually doing is completely reloading the local copy of the page from its cache through a keyboard shortcut. It is precisely about this that we will talk to you next and how to do it.
Do a hard refresh in the main browsers
Keep in mind that to speed up browsing , these programs save copies of website data on your computer locally. They do this through a set of files that we know as a cache . In this way, when we load a website, we are often seeing a local copy of the elements of the site. The images, which are extracted from the cache, serve as an example. At the same time, it is interesting to know that this cache can be cleaned easily from the configuration of each of the browsers.
But of course, as expected, as a general rule if the browser loads a website and detects a change in its contents, it gets a new version of the site. This is something you do from the remote web server, so it will replace the stored cache. But the process is not perfect, since as we have mentioned before it does not always work as it should. What we mean by this is that sometimes the browser loads a local copy of the website data from the cache, but this does not coincide with the latest version of the server.
As a result, the web page looks incorrect, does not function properly, and displays outdated content. Therefore, to solve it, what we have to do is what we will see next. We have to force the web browser to discard what it has in cache and download the latest version from the site. Actually this is what we know as doing a hard refresh or forced refresh.
In most programs of this type, we can do this that we tell you quickly and easily as we will see below.
Refresh the cache in Chrome, Firefox or Edge
Once we are clear about all this that we have told you and we find the problem that a certain website only shows obsolete content, we are going to solve it. As we told you before, the first step here is to use the F5 key, but this does not always work so we are going to refresh the cache or do a hard refresh. The first thing we should know here is that the main current internet browsers allow us to do this in the same way.
At this point, what we can try to do a hard refresh or refresh the cache is to use the Ctrl + F5 key combination. In the event that we see that this system does not work either, we can also try with the combination Shift + F5 or with Ctrl + Shift + R. Similarly, some browsers allow us to reload the pages from their contextual menu. For example, if we click on Chrome with the right mouse button, we find the option to Reload.
In this way, what we achieve is that the browser, whether it is Firefox, Chrome or Edge, loads the recent version of the web that we have on the screen. This forced loading is done from the remote server that hosts the page.
Finally, especially suitable for developers but valid for all types of users, we can click with the right mouse on the refresh button next to the address bar. Of course, in this case, it will be essential that we have the developers window open, something that we achieve with the F12 key.
At that moment we will be able to see a contextual menu that allows us to empty the cache and force the reload of the web, or just force the load again.