How to Clear Your Browser Cache in Chrome, Edge, Brave, Firefox, and Safari

“Clear your cache” is the most common instruction in IT support, and it is usually given without explaining what it does or which of the four things in that menu you actually want to tick. Here is how to clear your browser cache properly in every browser your office runs, and how to know when the cache is not your problem at all.

Start with a hard refresh, not a cache clear

Most of the time you do not need to clear anything. You need one page to stop serving you a stale copy.

• Windows: Ctrl + F5 or Ctrl + Shift + R
• Mac: Cmd + Shift + R

That reloads the current page while ignoring the cached version, and it does not sign you out of anything else. Try it before you go near the settings.

The shortcut that works in every browser

If the hard refresh did not do it, this opens the right dialog directly in Chrome, Edge, Brave, and Firefox, on both Windows and Mac:

• Windows: Ctrl + Shift + Delete
• Mac: Cmd + Shift + Delete

Chrome, Edge, and Brave open a browsing-data dialog. Firefox opens Clear Recent History. In all of them, set the time range, tick the cache option, and leave the rest alone.

That last part matters. The cache and your cookies are different things, and the dialog will happily delete both. Cache holds copies of images, scripts, and pages. Cookies hold your logins. Tick the cache box and you fix a stale page. Tick the cookies box and you sign yourself out of every site you use, including your email.

Chrome

Google renamed this recently, so older instructions you find will not match what is on your screen.

1. Three dots, top right, then Delete browsing data
2. Choose a time range. All time for troubleshooting, Last hour if you just want this one page fixed.
3. Tick Cached images and files
4. Delete data

It is no longer buried under Settings, and the confirm button says Delete data, not Clear data.

Edge

1. Settings and more, then Settings
2. Privacy, search, and services
3. Under Clear browsing data, choose Choose what to clear
4. Tick Cached images and files, pick a time range, then clear

Brave

Brave is Chromium underneath, so Ctrl + Shift + Delete (or Cmd + Shift + Delete) opens the same style of dialog as Chrome. Tick the cached files option and clear.

Worth knowing before you bother: a site that is broken specifically in Brave is often not a cache problem at all. Brave blocks trackers and scripts by default, and that breaks a small number of business web apps. Click the Brave lion icon in the address bar and drop shields for that one site first. If the site starts working, the cache was never the issue.

Firefox

1. Ctrl + Shift + Delete on Windows, or Cmd + Shift + Delete on Mac, opens Clear Recent History
2. Set the time range
3. Tick Temporary cached files and pages, and leave cookies unticked unless you want to be signed out
4. Clear

Safari on Mac

Safari does not separate cache from history in the main menu. The straightforward route:

History, then Clear History, then pick a time range.

Be aware this clears more than cache, so you will be signed out of sites. On a Mac, that is usually fine because Keychain fills your passwords back in.

On a phone

• Chrome, Android or iPhone: three dots, then Delete browsing data, then tick cached images and files
• Safari on iPhone: Settings app, then Safari (on newer iOS this sits under Apps), then Clear History and Website Data. This signs you out of sites.

What clearing the cache actually fixes

Your browser keeps local copies of the pieces a site is built from: images, stylesheets, JavaScript, fonts. That is the point of it. It is why a site you visit daily loads faster than one you have never seen. The cache is a performance feature, not junk that piles up, and clearing it on a schedule does nothing for you.

It becomes a problem in exactly one situation: the site changed and your copy did not. The browser is confidently serving you last week’s files. Every symptom below is that same problem wearing a different costume.

A site looks broken to you but fine to a coworker. The most common one by far. A vendor pushed an update, your browser held on to the old stylesheet, and now new HTML is being painted with old CSS. Buttons land in the wrong spot, columns stack strangely, images do not load.

A web app is stuck on an old version of itself. The page loads, but a feature that shipped last week is missing, or you click something and nothing happens. The app’s JavaScript is a stale copy that no longer matches the server it is talking to. You see this in portals, payroll systems, and anything that showed you a “we’ve updated” banner you dismissed.

You keep seeing an old price, an old logo, an old PDF. The content changed at the source. What you are looking at is a photograph of it.

A page half-loads and then hangs. A file got truncated by a dropped connection and the browser saved the broken copy anyway. It will keep handing you that broken copy until you clear it.

Some sign-in loops. You log in, it bounces you back to the login screen, repeat. Sometimes that is cache. More often it is cookies, which is why the dialog lets you tick both. Tick cookies as well when you are chasing a login problem, and expect to get signed out of other sites.

That is the honest list. If your symptom is not on it, clearing your cache is very likely to waste ten minutes, and the next section is the one you want.

What it will not fix, and what to check instead

1. DNS problems. If a site does not resolve at all, that is DNS or the network, not your browser. Try the site on your phone over cellular. If it also fails there, the problem is the site or your DNS, not your laptop.
2. Extensions. A misbehaving extension survives a cache clear. Open a private or incognito window, which loads without extensions by default. If the site works there, an extension is your culprit.
3. The server side. If the site is down or slow for everyone, no amount of local clearing matters. Check with one coworker before you spend twenty minutes on it.

There is a fourth: cached Microsoft 365 credentials. When someone gets an endless sign-in loop in Outlook Web or Teams, clearing the browser cache alone rarely resolves it, because the stale token lives in the Windows credential store or a conditional access policy is blocking the session. That one is worth escalating to whoever runs your Microsoft 365 tenant instead of grinding on.

A note for whoever manages the fleet

If your staff are clearing their cache weekly to keep a line-of-business web app working, that is not a user problem. That is an application or configuration problem, and it is quietly costing you an hour a week per person. Cache-busting headers, a browser policy pushed through Intune or group policy, or a fix on the app vendor’s side will end it permanently.

We handle that kind of recurring annoyance as part of managed IT, and the standard question we ask is not “did you clear your cache” but “why does this keep happening.” If your team has a workaround they perform every week, tell us about it and we will find out whether it can just stop.

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Menu paths in this article were verified against Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Apple’s own current documentation in August 2026. Browsers rename these menus regularly. If a label on your screen does not match, the keyboard shortcut above still opens the right dialog.