If you’re having issues with a website, one of the common troubleshooting steps that you’ll see is to clear your browser cache.
To help offer a speedier browsing experience, modern web browsers store certain static files on your local computer in a specified browser cache directory. This eliminates the need to re-download static assets – like a logo – as you browse around to different pages of a website.
Most of the time, it works perfectly. But occasionally, this approach can cause issues with a site, either because your browser is still serving up a cached resource even though that resource has changed or because your cached files have been corrupted.
When that happens, you can often fix the problem by clearing your browser cache, which essentially means deleting all the locally-stored files and downloading a fresh copy of everything.
In this article, you’ll learn how to clear your browser cache for all popular browsers, ordered by market share. You can click below to jump straight to the browser you’re using:
And then at the end, we’ll also show you a helpful trick to force refresh a single web page without needing to clear your entire browser cache.
To clear the browser cache in Google Chrome, you first need to open the Clear browsing data interface.
To access this interface, you can use the Ctrl + Shift + Del hotkey. Or, you can follow these steps:
Once you select that option, Chrome will open a new tab with the Clear browsing data interface.
In this interface:
Then, click Clear data to finish the process. And that’s it – you just cleared out all of the cached files for the time that you specified.
To only clear the browser cache in Safari, you’ll first need to enable the Develop menu.
To enable this menu, open your Safari Preferences and go to the Advanced tab. Then, check the box for Show Develop Menu in menu bar:
Once you’ve enabled the Develop menu, hover over the new Develop option in your menu bar and choose Empty Caches to clear your Safari browser cache:
Alternatively, an easier way to clear your Safari browser cache is to just go to History → Clear History. However, this method will clear all of your browsing data, including your history and cookies. So while it is easier, this second method clears more than just your browser cache:
To clear the browser cache in Firefox, click the hamburger icon in the top-right corner of the Firefox interface and select Options:
This will open a new tab. In that new tab, select the Privacy & Security menu item:
Find the Cookies and Site Data area. Then, click the Clear Data button:
In the popup, check the box for Cached Web Content. Then, click Clear:
And that’s it! You’ve just cleared your Firefox browser cache.
To clear the browser cache in Opera, you first need to open the Clear browsing data interface.
That will open up a new tab with the Clear browsing data popup active.
In this popup
Then, click Clear data to clear all the cached files for the time that you selected.
To clear the browser cache in Internet Explorer, you first need to open the Delete Browsing History interface.
In the Delete Browsing History popup, check the box for Temporary Internet files and website files. Then, click Delete:
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And that’s it! You’ve just cleared your Internet Explorer browser cache.
To clear the browser cache in Edge, click the three horizontal dots icon in the top-right corner of the Edge interface. Then, select Settings:
In the slide-out that appears, find the Clear browsing data section. Then, click the Choose what to clear button:
Then, check the box for Cached data and files and click the Clear button:
And that’s it! You’ve just cleared your Edge browser cache.
As an alternative to clearing your entire browser cache, most browsers let you “force refresh” a single page. With this approach, you’ll reload all the assets on that page. But it won’t clear the entire cache.
This is a good method if you’re only experiencing issues with a single page.
To force refresh a single page, you can use the following keyboard shortcuts:
And that’s all you need to know about clearing your browser cache! Once you’ve cleared the cache, you’ll get a fresh version of the site, which will fix the issue as long as the issue was related to the cache.
If you’re running your own WordPress site, this same principle can potentially cause issues for your visitors if their browsers store your website’s files for long periods of time.
Until a visitor’s browser cache clears, they won’t see the newest version of certain files on your site (unless they manually clear their cache or force refresh the page, of course).
To fix this, you can use a technique call cache busting. Cache busting ensures that your visitors receive the most recent version of your file(s) no matter what.
Two great options for cache busting are:
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