Until recently, I ran Firefox on my Mac with the cache disabled because I found it annoying that my tweaks weren’t updated when refreshing a work in progress. My usual Control/Command+F5 wouldn’t work for me. Being used to Firefox on Windows, I’d often forget and find myself powering up VoiceOver.
To clarify, on a Mac, Control+F5 is not a hard refresh as it is on Windows. In the majority of cases, the Command key replaces the Control key when converting Windows shortcuts to Mac ones. For example, Control+T to open a new tab under Windows is Command+T on a Mac.
Logic dictates that a hard refresh should be Command+F5 on my Mac. Indeed, the Firefox documentation on keyboard shortcuts shows that Command+F5 should refresh overriding the cache, but that loads VoiceOver for me (OS X 10.4 or later).
The long and short of it
I now use Command+R for refresh and Command+Shift+R for when I need to do a hard refresh. As you’d expect, you can replace Command with Control for the Windows equivalent. And now I can turn my cache back on and save some time and bandwidth!
Of course, I could have set my own keyboard shortcuts! But then I’d have to set them up on all installations of Firefox I use.
7 Responses to “Quick Tip: hard refresh for Firefox on Mac”
Thank you,
I work on windows (bootcamp on an imac) during the day and my mac at home. I too keep accidentally initiating voice over. Thanks for the tip.
Thank you!! Was driving me nuts!
+1
lol thanks that was pretty frustrating.
Thanks! Command-shift-R. Was that simple!
Standards are nice. I’m not saying Microsoft should have a license to dictate standards, but it’s frustrating when you have to go back and forth between different interfaces. I run Ubuntu at home but my company provides us all with macs. My first month was very frustrating — it’s still a pain to go back and forth between computers.
I miss my delete key — why does the function key have to be all the way on the opposite side of the keyboard from all the keys I want to use it with (delete, volume, arrows…) If only I had bigger hands.
Oh well, one more keyboard combo down
The command works because does not reload cache-free. Still caching my changes…