ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ:Bypass your cache

Wikipedia saves bandwidth by instructing your web browser to store many parts of the site in its local cache (normally on your hard drive), so that they are downloaded only once. This includes articles you've previously viewed, images previously displayed, style sheets, JavaScript, etc.

Sometimes, this has the undesired—and highly confusing—result that a recent change appears to be ignored. There may be other abnormalities, such as changes to the site's interface or changed user preferences having no effect.

When you encounter strange behavior, please try instructing your browser to bypass the cache so that the whole page is reloaded even if there is a cached copy. Normally, revisiting the cached page, or clicking "Refresh" or "Reload", will cause the browser to ask the Web site if there is a newer version available, downloading only if there is; the instructions below explain how to over-ride this behavior.

Do this before reporting the problem. If the problem persists, report it at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical).

In unusual circumstances, it may be worth clearing the entire cache, or—at the extreme—disable browser caching entirely. Clearing the cache might help the browser perform better if it has cached many items which are not likely to be viewed soon. Disabling the cache is not a long-term desirable solution, because it downloads everything from a Web site every time, even if you've just looked at them and they haven't changed. However, disabling the cache is a useful experiment to determine whether caching contributes to a problem.

Instructions for various browsers

Internet Explorer

• To reload a page and bypass the cache:
  • either: Hold the Ctrl key and press the F5 key.
  • or: Hold the Ctrl key and click the “Refresh” button on the toolbar.
• To completely clear the cache (see note above):
  • Internet Explorer 9:
    1. Click “Tools” (the Gear-shaped button on the top-right section of the browser), point to “Safety” and click “Delete Browsing History...” (keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+⇧ Shift+Del).
    2. Select "Temporary Internet Files", and click “Delete”. (If Wikipedia is in your list of favorites, you may need to turn off the "Preserve Favorites website data" at the top of the dialog box.)
    3. Internet Explorer 9 will now silently delete the items you’ve chose. Once finished, the notification bar appears at the bottom of the screen, stating that the selected browsing history has been deleted.
  • Internet Explorer 8:
    1. Show the Delete Browsing History box:
       • either: Hold the Ctrl and ⇧ Shift keys and press Del.
       • or: Click the “Tools” menu then select “Delete Browsing History”.
       • or: Click the “Safety” command bar button then selecting “Delete Browsing History”.
    2. then: Make sure “Temporary Internet Files” and “History” are checked, and click “Delete”. If you want, you can also opt to delete cookies (but this will cause websites to forget any settings you have provided).
  • Internet Explorer 7:
    • Click “Tools” and select “Internet Options”, choose the “General” tab and click “Delete Files” under the Temporary Internet Files section. If you want, you can also opt to delete cookies and browsing history.
  • Older versions of Internet Explorer:
    • Click on “Tools” and then “Internet Options”, and choose the “General” tab. Then click on “Delete...” under “Browsing history”. In the “Temporary Internet files” section, click “Delete Files...”. You will then get a dialogue box asking if you want to delete just the temporary files, or all offline content. Choose the latter and click “OK”.
• To change cache settings (normally not needed: only do this if you are reasonably confident about what you are doing):
  • Select Tools ‣ Internet Options ‣ Temporary Internet files ‣ Settings... to make advanced configuration changes to the cache.
    • There is an option labeled “Check for a new version of stored pages”. This does not bypass the cache, it merely determines how often the browser asks whether there is a newer version available.

Mozilla Firefox and other related browsers

This includes Firefox, SeaMonkey, Netscape 6, et al.

• To reload a page and bypass the cache:
  • either: Hold down both the Ctrl and ⇧ Shift keys and then press R. (Alternatively, hold down the Ctrl key and then press F5.) On a Mac, use the ⌘ Cmd key instead of Ctrl.
  • or: Hold down the ⇧ Shift key and click the Reload button on the navigation toolbar.
• To completely clear the cache (see note above):
  • In versions of Mozilla Firefox that display a single, orange "Firefox" button: click the "Firefox" button and click "Options". Select the "Advanced" section, and go to the "Network" tab, and click the "Clear Now" button. Then click "OK".
  • When Firefox displays a menu bar, from the "Edit" or "Tools" menu, choose "Preferences" or "Options". Select the “Advanced” section, and go to the "Network" tab. Click the button called "Clear Now". Then click "OK".
  • In SeaMonkey and later versions of Netscape, choose Edit ‣ Preferences..., expand the "Advanced" section and choose "Cache". Click on the "Clear Cache" button.
• To disable caching (usually not necessary; only do this if you are reasonably confident about what you are doing):
  • For Firefox
    1. Choose Tools ‣ Options... (or Edit ‣ Preferences in the Linux version)
    2. Choose “Advanced” at the top
    3. Choose the “Network” tab
    4. Change the cache size to 0 (zero).
  • For SeaMonkey
    1. Choose Edit ‣ Preferences...
    2. Expand the “Advanced” item near the left bottom
    3. Choose “Cache” item
    4. Change the “Size” value to 0 (zero).

If you would keep your data in your cache and test Wikipedia with a empty cache, you can use Private Browsing mode.

Safari

• To reload a page and bypass the cache:
  • for version 4 and newer:
    • Hold down the ⇧ Shift key and click the Reload toolbar button.
  • for version 3 and older:
    • Hold down the ⌘ Cmd key, and press R. This kind of “regular” reload will usually bypass the cache.
    • Note that Apple claims that clicking the “Reload” toolbar button has the same effect as ⌘ Cmd+R, but this is not true; frequently the button will not bypass the cache. In fact, numerous Web developers have reported erratic behavior in general in bypassing the cache in Safari, in some cases having to resort to both clearing the cache (see below) and then quitting and relaunching the application.
• To completely clear the cache (see note above):
  • From the “Safari” menu, choose “Empty Cache...” or hold down the ⌥ Opt and ⌘ Cmd keys and press E.
• To disable the cache permanently (this method only works on old versions of Safari 2 on OS X 10.4 and previous versions, and is not recommended as it may potentially (although rarely) cause system instability):
  1. Quit Safari by choosing “Quit” from the “Safari” menu, or by holding down the ⌘ Cmd key and pressing Q.
  2. Open a Terminal window by double-clicking “Terminal” within the “Utilities” folder, which is within the “Applications” folder.
  3. Type the following commands, which are case-sensitive, each followed by the ↵ Enter key:
     1. rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/Safari
     2. touch ~/Library/Caches/Safari
  4. Quit Terminal by choosing “Quit” from the “Terminal” menu, or by holding down the ⌘ Cmd key and pressing Q.
  5. Relaunch Safari.
• To disable the cache for the session (Requires developer menu to be enabled. Go to “Preferences”, pick the “Advanced” tab, then click “Show Develop menu in menu bar”):
  • Click “Develop”, then click “Disable Caches”

Google Chrome

• To reload a page:
  • either: Hold the Ctrl key and press F5.
  • or: Hold the ⇧ Shift key and press F5.
  • or: Hold the Ctrl key and click Reload button.
• To reload a page and bypass the cache:
  • You can Repeat either action above as soon as the page has reloaded OR
  • On Windows: Hold the Ctrl and ⇧ Shift keys and press the R key.
  • On OS X: Hold the ⌘ Cmd and ⇧ Shift keys and press the R key.
• To disable the cache:
  • Add --disk-cache-size=1 --media-cache-size=1 command line switches to the shortcut target.
• To clear the cache:
  1. Go to the “Tools” menu (the wrench on the upper right of the browser) and click on “Options” (under Mac and Linux, select “Preferences”; under Chrome OS, select “Settings”) Shortcut: Ctrl+⇧ Shift+Del.
  2. Select the “Under the Hood” tab, and click on “Clear browsing data...”
  3. Select the types of data you want to clear, include “Empty the cache” option.
  4. On the “Clear data from this period:” drop-down list, select one of the following:
     • Everything to clear all the data you selected;
     • Last day to clear the data only from the last day;
     • Last week to clear the data only from the last week; or
     • Last 4 weeks to clear the data only from the last 4 weeks.
  5. Finally, click “Clear browsing data”.

If you are the kind that would prefer to keep the data in your cache but test what Wikipedia would be like with a empty cache as opposed to without one, you can use the "incognito" browsing option which is explained below.

Opera

• To reload a page:
  • Hold down the ⇧ Shift key, and click the Reload button on the navigation toolbar.
  • You can also hit Ctrl+R to reload.
• To completely clear the cache:
  • From the “Tools” menu, choose “Preferences”. Expand the “Advanced” options and choose “History”. Click the “Empty now” button.
  • Alternatively, you can clear the cache, history and cookies: From the “Tools” menu, choose “Delete private data”. Click “Details”, make sure that “Delete entire cache” is selected, and then choose any other data you want to remove.
• To disable the cache permanently (only do this if you are reasonably confident of what you are doing):
  • From the “Tools” menu, choose “Preferences”. Expand the “Advanced” options and choose “History”. Click on the dropdown for “Disk Cache” and select “Off”.
    • Note: On a Mac the "Tools" menu does not have a "Preferences" option. "Opera --> Preferences" is the correct menu item.
• To set up Opera to bypass the cache of specific files without needing to clear the entire cache
  1. From the “Tools” menu, choose “Appearance” (or press ⇧ Shift+F12).
  2. In the dialogue, select “Panels” and tick the “Info” and “Show panel toggle at edge of window” checkboxes.
  3. Now there will be a clickable bar along the left edge of your browser window.
  4. Click the bar and select “Info” (
     icon) and this will give you a list of files used in the page.
  5. You can now select any single individual file for which you want to selectively bypass cache (as above - using F5 or ⇧ Shift+Reload).

Konqueror

• To reload a page and bypass the cache:
  • either: Press F5.
  • or: Click the “Reload” button on the toolbar.
  • (Unlike other browsers, Konqueror seems to bypass its cache whenever you reload a page.)
• To completely clear the cache:
  • From the “Settings” menu, select “Configure Konqueror”. Scroll down to select the icon labeled “Cache”, and click the button labeled “Clear Cache”.

Flock

• To completely clear the cache:
  1. Go to the “Tools” menu and click on “Options”.
  2. Go to “Privacy” and then click on “Cache”.
  3. Click on “Clear Cache Now”.
• Flock v1.0.8 for Mac instructions:
  1. Go to the “Flock” menu and click on “Preferences”.
  2. Go to “Privacy” tab and then, under “Private Data” (bottom field), click on the “Clear Now...” button.
  3. Select the “Cache” checkbox (only, or in combination with other desired options).
  4. Click the “Clear Private Data Now” button.

OmniWeb

• To completely clear the cache:
  • From the “OmniWeb” menu, choose “Flush Cache” or hold down the ⌥ Opt and ⌘ Cmd keys and press U.

Server cache

The Wikimedia servers cache a version of articles for visitors who are not logged in. For these users, preferences do not affect the layout so each webpage is always the same. They are recreated (converted from wikitext to HTML) only when the wikitext changes.

This causes a few undesirable side effects due to bugs, glitches (or design) of the software:

• References to variables which give the current date and time (୨୩ ଡିସେମ୍ବର, ୧୯:୩୪ UTC) ({{CURRENTDAY}} {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}}, {{CURRENTTIME}}) are not updated if not logged in.
• The cache for redirected pages contains the rendered HTML-page of the target; this is not "invalidated" (recreated from the article text) when the target page is updated. That is, if Article A is a redirect to Article B, subsequent references to Article A displays the cached copy of Article B even if Article A or Article B is updated.

Forcing the server to re-render

Bypassing your own cache might not be enough if the updated content that is not being properly displayed is contained in a template or other transcluded page. You may need to purge the server cache of old versions of the page in order for the new material to be visible.

The server can be instructed to refresh its cache of a page’s contents with the action=purge URL parameter. Add this to the end of the URL, or in place of the action=edit or action=history.

For example, to purge this page—which forces the latest version of wikimarkup to be rendered to HTML—visit

//or.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E0%AC%89%E0%AC%87%E0%AC%95%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%AA%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%A1%E0%AC%BC%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%86:Bypass_your_cache&action=purge or //or.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AC%89%E0%AC%87%E0%AC%95%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%AA%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%A1%E0%AC%BC%E0%AC%BF%E0%AC%86:Bypass_your_cache?action=purge

For technical pages you think may need to be purged on a regular basis, include {{purge}}. Don’t put this on article space pages.

Internet Service Provider Cache

Your Internet service provider, proxy, or other intermediary services may also cache pages. You will need to consult your Internet service provider’s Terms of Service or customer service for more assistance with purging such cache.

Disabling page caching

As a last resort, you can adjust your user preferences (after logging in to Wikipedia) to disable page caching entirely, using the options and tools listed below

Preferences → Appearance → Disable page caching.

See meta:Help:Preferences#Advanced options. Be forewarned: you will be using more bandwidth, make the servers work harder and get worse performance with this option set. Use it as a last resort.

See also

• Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
• Help:Dummy edit#Null edit
• Cache manifest in HTML5
• Wikipedia:Purge

External links

• Groovypost.com, How-To Clear Firefox 3.x Cache
• Groovypost.com, How-To Clear IE 7 Cache
• Refreshyourcache.com, Step by step guides for clearing cache