What is Browser Cache and How to Clear or ByPass it [UseThisTip Explains]

By Deepanker in Browser. Updated on March 25, 2013.

Whenever you have some issue with your website or internet connection, IT support person will suggest you to clear the browser cache and delete all cookies. At this time, there is a one common question that comes in mind. This question is “What is browser cache and why should I clear it?” In this detailed article, I will try to explain about Browser cache.

Browser Cache

Browser Cache is a temporary storage place in your system that is used by browser. When we visit a web page, it downloads a copy of the page in this temporary location. It downloads html page, JavaScript files, CSS files and images. When we next time request for the same web page, browser checks this temporary storage and see whether the local exists or not. If it found the local copy of the page, it served the page from local copy. This process save your internet bandwidth and loads web page faster. Hence, cache is very useful for people using slow internet connection.

Why we need to clear the cache

As we surf the web, this cache storage grows. Sometimes it crosses the 100 MB size. The fact is that we can not limit the size of browser cache. At this moment, it takes time to check for local copy because of huge size. This makes web browsing slow. Many times, website has been updated but we are still getting older cache version. These are few reasons why we need to clear browser cache.

Option for clearing cache can be found in the settings of all browsers. If you use any tools to optimize windows performance, it automatically deletes temp and cache files created by browsers.

How to bypass Browser Cache or Clear Cache

As we know that we need to delete browser cache on regular interval, we should know how to do this. If we do not want to delete all cache, we should also know how to bypass cache for a single website.

I am not going to explain the long process for this task. We can simply use Keyboard shortcuts for this. If you are not able to remember these shortcuts, you can simply go to menu options to clear cache.

Chrome

Reload Page and Bypass cache: Ctrl] + [F5] or [SHIFT] + [F5]

Clear Cache: [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [Del]

Firefox

Reload Page and Bypass cache: Ctrl] + [F5] or [Ctrl] + [SHIFT] + [R]

Clear Cache: [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [Del]

Internet Explorer

Reload Page and Bypass cache: Ctrl] + [F5] or [SHIFT] + [F5]

Clear Cache: [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [Del]

In case of any kind of confusion or problem, you can ask in comments.

Deepanker

Deepanker Verma is the founder of Techlomedia. He is a tech blogger, developer and gadget freak.

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