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How do you refresh on a Mac?

To refresh the screen on a browser on the Mac see the steps below:

T
Written by Terence Cassidy
Updated over 3 weeks ago

Pressing F5 is a well-known shortcut for refreshing a web browser, website, or webpage on Windows platforms, but using this shortcut on a Mac produces a different result.


Instead of using F5, Command+R (or cmd+r) is the shortcut you’ll want to use to perform a refresh on Mac platforms. Of course, this applies to the majority of Mac web browsers, too.

📌 Note: If you find that Command+R isn't refreshing a page, it could be due to conflicting shortcuts. Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts to make sure the shortcut is assigned correctly.

Sometimes, a standard refresh isn’t enough to fix a web page that isn’t displaying correctly or shows outdated information. In this case, you’ll want to try a hard refresh.
A hard refresh forces the web browser to clear its local copy of the webpage (cache) and download the latest version from the site server.
To perform a hard refresh, you’ll need to modify the standard Command+R input, but the key combination will be a bit different depending on which browser you use.

  • Safari and Opera: Press Command+Option+R

  • Chrome, Firefox, and Edge: Press Shift+Command+R

You can also perform a hard refresh by holding the Shift key and clicking the refresh button on your browser.

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