What is Browser Cache?
The browser cache is a temporary collection of files from web pages you’ve previously visited stored locally on your computer. These files often consist of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and various media files. Having local copies of these documents helps facilitate faster load times during subsequent visits to the sites you frequent.
Why Clear Browser Cache?
Ideally, the browser should detect if a newer file exists on a page and update its cache accordingly by downloading only what it needs. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always occur so, new changes or updates on a website may not be immediately visible to a user with the site cached.
We Promise We Made Those Changes.
In the web design world, this often presents issues for our clients who are expecting to see their changes live on the site. To reconcile this issue, a hard refresh is needed to clear out the browser cache. This will trigger the page to be re-downloaded fresh from the server in its entirety. The guide below details how to quickly perform a hard refresh in various browsers and operating systems.
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How to Clear Cache on Mobile.
For reasons unknown to the internet, clearing cache on your mobile device is much more involved. I’ve detailed the steps required to clear cache on the most popular mobile browsers.
Mobile Safari
- Launch the "Settings" app.
- Scroll down the menu and select "Safari."
- Scroll down and select "Clear History and Website Data."
- Confirm by tapping "Clear History and Data" from the pop-up window.
- Relaunch the Safari app.
Mobile Chrome (iOS and Android)
- Click on the menu button (three dots).
- Click on “Settings” in the menu.
- Click on “Privacy” in the menu.
- Click on “Clear Browsing Data.”
- Select "Cookies, Site Data" and “Cached Images and Files” from the list.
- Click on “Clear Browsing Data” at the bottom.
- Relaunch Chrome.
Having any issues clearing your cache? Drop us a comment below. For more tips check out some of our other blogs.