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Comment by UnoriginalGuy | Hacker News Reader

It is possible, although rare, for Windows Explorer to get out of sync with what exists on the file system or virtual filesystem(s). The refresh button re-acquires the data from the source and re-draws the result for the user.

For example, if you open a network share, delete a file using another machine that file might take between several seconds to a minute to disappear visually (although if you try to use the file you'll get an error and it will refresh removing it). You can alternatively use the refresh button to get an updated view instantly.

It is mostly useful with non-standard virtual file system services rather than the normal NTFS/FAT32 file systems Windows uses.

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I've seen cases where windows explorer will arbitrarily decide to stop updating an entire folder tree for no apparent reason, at which point being able to push F5 suddenly becomes very handy. Of course, it doesn't help when I tell explorer to create a new folder which doesn't show up, thereby making it impossible to assign it a name until you refresh and then find the "New Folder" you just created.

I guess it's more handy to refresh instead of navigating out of a folder and going back in.

All file notification systems tend to be somewhat race condition prone, or to lose events under some circumstances. Linux has a lot of different subsystems, none of which always work https://lwn.net/Articles/604686/

I understand but isn't it very odd to give end-user a button like that? Also, why Mac OS didn't have one?

OS X indeed lacks it, and it is a pain in the butt to some:

http://osxdaily.com/2013/08/30/refreshing-finder-windows-in-...

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/60119/how-does-the-...

As you can see people have to come up with quirky workarounds to force refresh a folder on OS X, rather than just clicking a context menu button helpfully provided.

Others have created third party software to add it:

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/24714/refresh-finder

This has 46,000 downloads.

Both Windows and OS X fall out of sync for similar reasons: sometimes bugs, sometimes refreshing is slow/expensive so is done infrequently (e.g. over a network), and sometimes third party software providing "virtual" file system elements are terrible.

I don't really find the concept of a refresh button odd at all. But that's only because I've seen how many virtual file system providers these systems support and how quirky some of them are. If all they supported is native files on traditional file systems attached via reliable buses, then a refresh button wouldn't be required.

Interesting contrast of design philosophy:

Mac - "It just works. We refuse to believe that it doesn't."

Windows - "It mostly works, but when it doesn't, press this button."

For a company so self-infatuated with design, they sure did a great job making Finder a frustrating and near-useless piece of software.

One would be either infatuated with design or infatuated by the self, "self-infatuated with design" does not make sense.

"Infatuated with the image of the self as a designer" is what I meant. Self-infatuation with a design component.

Huh, none of these show the workaround I've always used: create a new folder and delete it. That's been my "pseudo-refresh" for years, because it's relatively quick to type command-shift-n, command-delete.

Two other things that cause Finder to show stale data: - change the icns file inside an app - enable 'calculate all sizes', then delete a file in a subdirectory

There's no easy way to refresh due to the various levels of caching involved. Closing and reopening windows doesn't help. In the icns case, not even killing Finder helps. So I assume that even if Apple wasn't fundamentally opposed to a refresh button in the UI, it would be non-trivial to implement the back button.

I _wish_ OSX had it. I often work inside of SMB shares and they go out of sync sometimes.

Isn't the Mac equivalent CMD+R? Not on my Mac to check at the moment but as an NFS user, I remember this working for me in the past.

Command-R in the Finder is "Go to the original of an alias".

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