-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 33
Clearing your browser cache
Is something not working right in the Home Assistant frontend?
Did you update a card from HACS but the new features still don't work?
Chances are (9/10) that your browser is displaying an old version from its cache.
Clearing your cache is HARD. See below for why.
Here's some tricks that seem to work in several situations as of April 2024, at least momentarily. It's quite possible that the next time you request the same page, you get an older cached version again.
This was kindly researched and provided by Derek Sellers.
Windows & Mac
- At the top right, click More and then Settings
- Click the Privacy and Security tab on the right
- Click Clear browsing data
- Select the time range All time
- Uncheck Browsing history and Cookies and other site data
- With Cached images and files selected, click Clear data
- Close the Settings tab
Android
- At the top right, tap More and then Settings
- Tap Privacy and Security
- Tap Clear browsing data
- Select the time range All time
- Uncheck Browsing history and Cookies and site data
- With Cached images and files checked, tap Clear data
- If shown Also clear data from these sites?, select appropriately and tap Clear
- Tap OK, got it if notified of cleared data on synced devices
- Tap the Back arrow twice to close Settings
iOS
- Tap More and then Clear Browsing Data
- Uncheck Browsing history and Cookies and site data
- With Cached images and files checked, tap Clear browsing data
- At the top right, tap Done.
Mac
- Navigate to the page
- Press Option+Cmd+E to clear the cache
- Press Cmd+R to reload the page
iOS
- Go to Settings > Safari > Advanced > Website Data
- Tap Remove All Website Data
Windows & Mac
- Click Menu (the three dots at the top right of the window) and select Settings
- Click the Privacy, search and services pane
- In the Clear browsing data section, click Choose what to clear
- Select Time Range of All time
- Uncheck everything except Cached images and files
- Click Clear now
- Close the Settings tab
Android
- Tap Menu (the three dots at the bottom of the screen), and select Settings
- Tap Privacy and Security
- Tap Clear browsing data
- Uncheck everything except Cached images and files
- Tap Clear data
- Press the Back arrow twice to exit Settings
Windows & Mac
- Click the Menu button and select Settings
- Select the Privacy and Security pane
- In the Cookies and Site Data section, click Clear Data
- Uncheck Cookies and Site Data
- With Cached Web Content checked, click Clear
- Close the Settings tab
Android
- Tap Menu (the three dots at the bottom of the screen), and select Settings
- Tap Delete browsing data
- Uncheck everything except Cached images and files
- Tap Delete browsing data
- Tap Delete
- Press the Back arrow twice to close the Settings
iOS
- At the bottom of the screen, tap the menu button
- Tap Settings
- Under the Privacy section, tap Data Management
- Tap Website Data
- Tap the site you want to clear or select Show More to find the site you want to clear
- At the bottom of the list, select Clear Items
Android
- Go to Settings
- Tap Apps
- Tap Home Assistant
- Tap Storage
- Tap Clear cache
- Tap the Back arrow
- Tap Force stop and OK
- Tap Open to reopen the app
iOS
- Go to Home Assistant Settings
- Select Companion App (near the bottom)
- Select Debugging (at the bottom)
- Tap Reset Frontend Cache
Amazon Fire
- Exit Fully Kiosk Browser (swipe from the left side of the screen and tap Exit Fully, confirming if asked)
- Go to Settings for the tablet (swipe down from the top of the screen twice and tap the Gear icon)
- Tap Apps & Notifications
- Tap Fully Kiosk Browser (or See all xx apps if not listed in Recently opened apps)
- Tap Storage
- Tap Clear cache
- Close Settings
- Reopen Fully Kiosk Browser
Android
- Exit Fully Kiosk Browser (swipe from the left side of the screen and tap Exit Fully, confirming if asked)
- Go to Settings for the tablet (swipe down from the top of the screen and tap the Gear icon)
- Tap Apps
- Tap Fully Kiosk Browser
- Tap Storage
- Tap Clear cache
- Close Settings
- Reopen Fully Kiosk Browser
The internet is full of repeated stuff. And I don't just mean everyone posting the same false information on facebook all the time. I mean things like code.
Take what's probably one of the cleanest pages on the internet right now: https://www.google.com
That's a header, a footer, a logo, a text field and two buttons. Each time you open that, your browser loads over 900 kB of data from 40-something different files! 900 kB doesn't sound like much, but also consider that there's 5.6 BILLION google searches made every day. That's 5.04 petabytes of data and would be enough for bringing large chunks of the internet to a crawl with trafic congestion.
Luckily, most of that data is actually the same every time. And your browser realizes this. Therefore it won't request all 900 kB from google every time, but only about 74 kB or so which contains stuff that's actually changing. The rest will only be requested once and then stored in the browser cache and reused the next time.
So, that brings us down to 414 terrabytes daily. That's... still a lot...
Ok, maybe all of those 74 kb DO need to change every day, but do they need to change between every single search? Maybe once per second is enough? There's 63 thousand google searches done every second. So if new data could be sent once every second instead that'd be 4,6 gb - per second, but at least much more manageable. Unfortunately not all of those 63000 searches are made by you from your browser [citation needed], so where should it be cached?
The answer is everywhere. Every time the google servers send out new data it's given an expiry date and is stored in every machine it passes. When you request the google homepage your browser asks your computer for the data, which asks your router, which asks your modem which asks your ISPs closet router, which asks another router, which asks... and so on. The first machine in that line which has data cached that's recent enough will break the chain and reply. And every machine that asked it will cache the data given.
Without this, the entire internet would grind to a halt in a fraction of a second - no doubt. But that's also why it's really really HARD to make sure you get the absolutely 100% latest information.
It's caches all the way down.