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Comment by capableweb | Hacker News Reader

Maybe that depends on the OS? Firefox on Linux does a normal refresh for me when doing CTRL+R but a hard refresh (without any cache) when I do CTRL+SHIFT+R.

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This is standard at least across Chrome and Firefox on Linux and MacOS— (ctrl|cmd)+R does a normal page refresh, (ctrl|cmd)+shift+R does a "hard refresh" where it reloads every resource on the page without caching.

Also, in Chrome, if and only if you have the dev tools open, right clicking the reload button will give you a menu with the options "Normal Reload", "Hard Reload", and "Empty Cache and Hard Reload". The third option will ensure that requests initiated by JS or that otherwise weren't part of the page load also won't be served from cache.

How long has this been a thing, and (more worryingly) how have I never heard about it until now? Is this common knowledge?

I think I've been using that shortcut for as long as I can remember. In web development circles it's certainly common knowledge, as you always end up in a situation or two where you need to reload without cache, but you don't want to clear the entire browser's cache.

Common knowledge for a very long time. Also F5/shift-F5.

Modifiers have been a thing since at least Netscape 4[1][2]

I'm pretty sure I remember using it earlier than that but can't be 100%.

[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=46845#c7

[2] http://www.bu.edu/uis_web3270/en/doc/troubleshoot/pd_ck_down...

Since before 2009 or something.

But it hasn't always been easy to find documentation about it, thanks to a combination I think of "simplifying" everything and Google not delivering correct results since somewhere around 2010.

Thankfully now there is Kagi that actually makes a bug report if you provide them with an example that doesn't work.

Ok MacOs (Chrome), I'll usually open View and hold down shift. 'Reload This Page' changes to 'Force Reload This Page' and I like the visual feedback that it's actually doing what I intend.

Nevermind, you're right. I've always thought it was without the shift on Firefox.

Sorry for the misinformation

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