So your developer or designer says they updated your site, but you can’t see it. They swear the changes have been posted but you are experiencing no joy.

Maybe the changes aren’t visible, or worse, things look misaligned and broken. Don’t worry; your developer or designer is (probably) not lying to you or clueless about the lack of apparent quality in their work.

Clicking the refresh/reload button does not always do the trick; the problem is that refreshing a web browser does not always clear the cache.

The cache comprises locally stored web pages, images, files, etc., that save bandwidth, computing power, and more by allowing your browser to pull a web page from local memory instead of asking the originating server again for the same page and assets.

How you clear cache is different based on your browser and operating system. Performing a hard refresh is what we want to do.

Easy Fix – Bust the Browser Cache!

While on the web page in question, use the following key combos to force a full/clean reload of the web page (should work in all popular modern browsers):

How to Refresh a Page on a PC

Ctrl+F5

Hold down Ctrl (the control key) while pressing the F5 key (Function 5) button at the top of your keyboard. You will often hear web developers talk about hitting F5… do this.

How to Refresh a Page on a Mac

Mac Non-Safari (Chrome, Firefox)

Command+Shift+R

Hold down the Shift and Command Keys, then press the letter R

Mac Safari

Command+R

Refreshing a page in Safari can be a little more complicated; Safari can be a stubborn beast, and sometimes you have to go with the menu: History > Clear History to force a full refresh on a Mac. Careful though. This can clear your entire history, cookies, etc.

Working on the Website and Still Not Seeing Your Changes?

Maybe it’s server side-caching. We have an article on setting up server-side caching and how to clear those caches.