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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).

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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. – ppumkin Jan 23 at 17:19
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8 Answers

up vote 28 down vote accepted

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]

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thanks, it's definitely not working for me. – Kip Dec 31 '09 at 15:39
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. :) – Kip Dec 31 '09 at 16:16
@whitequark it seems necessary to do that step (Cmd+Shift+Delete on OSX) in order to clear the cached Flash XML. – sholsinger Jun 15 '11 at 16:17
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. – Tauren Sep 20 '11 at 7:36
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up vote 24 down vote

On a Mac, it's Command-Shift-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 Command-Shift-R, cache is ignored.

For Command-R, Chrome will issue If-Modified-Since 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 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).

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Thanks for the great detailed answer. Possibly too technical for the audience but I value it greatly. – sholsinger Jun 15 '11 at 16:17
@Lipis, I rolled back your edit; I don't really support <kbd> as it is right now. Still curious: how come you only edited my answer? – Arjan Jan 21 at 12:49
Command-Shift-R is not working in current Chrome stable. – olouv Mar 14 at 14:02
It seems to be working fine on my Mac, @olouv. Did you peek into the Developer Tool's Network tab? (True, on this very site there are a few resources for which Chrome still issues an If-Modified-Since request instead, but those resources are requested by JavaScript, not by the HTML parser. Also, as caching for the page itself is set to just one minute, maybe small differences in server time and local time might mess up too?) – Arjan Mar 14 at 18:03
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up vote 3 down vote

There definitely is no simple way to do this in Chrome like other browsers. The documentation may say that CTRL+F5 or SHIFT+F5 should reload and ignore cache, but it simply doesn't. I have a flash slideshow that stores the settings/configuration in an .xml file, and after updating the XML file, Chrome will still load the cached version unless I purge the cache. I always have to run another browser when updating the slideshow so I don't have to clear my Chrome cache all the time.

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Flash cache is something completely different from Chrome. – Joshua Sep 2 '10 at 5:13
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up vote 2 down vote

Definitely a bug in Chrome - it's also images that should be changed, but it uses the old image instead, even after repeatedly hitting Ctrl + F5.

I was trying to change my Google Apps logo, but the only way it will change on Gmail is if I use incognito mode or clear the entire cache. Ctrl + F5 keeps the old logo.

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up vote 1 down vote

I have files (images and full html pages) on the server that get updated and no key combination in chrome seems to force fetching them.

I rely on chrome´s incognito mode - CTRL-SHIFT-N - when I need to force refresh.

Note that CTRL-R or CTRL-F5 while inside an incognito window doesn´t seem to work either. You must close and reopen the incognito window - hence my reliance on shortcuts - CTRL-W to close, CTRL-SHIFT-N to reopen.

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up vote 1 down vote

Ctrl - Shift - Delete will allow you to remove cache for the previous hour. That will assure that the next time you reload a site it is fresh.

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up vote 0 down vote

I did this: Right Click the FRAME (that was out of sync), and SHIFT clicked the "Reload Frame" option. The frame then refreshed properly.

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up vote 0 down vote

In the opened developer tools (ctrl+shft+i) in the lower right corner click the little settings icon (it's like a gearwheel).

Activate Disable cache check-box

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