How to empty Chrome's cache and do a hard reload

by
, posted

This post assumes you know a bit about browser caches.

Sometimes I want to empty Chrome’s cache and do a hard reload. Maybe I’m getting some stale resources that I’m pretty sure have changed and I want to make sure I’m getting fresh files.

To empty Chrome’s cache and do a hard refresh:

  1. Open the Chrome DevTools. You can’t do a hard reload if you don’t have the DevTools open.
  2. Right-click on the Reload button.
  3. Click “Empty Cache and Hard Reload”.

I haven’t seen this concisely documented anywhere, so I thought I’d write this post!

Edit: A reader sent Clear Cache, a simple Chrome extension that can do this too.