Clearing Safari Cache

March 9, 2004 12:52 AM

I use the Safari browser because it was already on this computer when I got it. Lately, it's been giving me cached versions of pages I access rather than the most recent version of the page. I have to do a "force reload" on pages to see what's changed since the last time I looked at it every time I access a site, even if I looked at it five minutes ago. (This makes it extremely difficult for me to be a jerk.)

I've looked at the "preferences" on Safari, and I can't tell why this has changed. Can anyone tell me why?

I should say actually that it's not that I get the same page I got "five minutes ago"; I get the same page I got last night.

posted by interrobang to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

That's strange, I don't really have the same problem. Are you behind a firewall or proxy that could cache the pages?

There is something else you could try. You need to enable the Safari debug menu, though. If you haven't already done this, go to the terminal and type in:
defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1

Relauch Safari and you should have a "Debug" menu. Select "Show Caches Window" from it, click the "Empty Webfoundation caches" and the "Empty webcore caches" buttons, and check the box "Disable webcore caches".

Let us know if fixes it
posted by derbs at 3:20 AM on March 9, 2004

"empty cache"?
posted by matteo at 4:03 AM on March 9, 2004

I just noticed that you can also empty the cache from the Safari menu, that may help without having to mess with the debug stuff.
posted by rorycberger at 4:05 AM on March 9, 2004

could the ISPs proxy server be the problem?
posted by yeahyeahyeahwhoo at 5:31 AM on March 9, 2004

Which version of Safari are you using? IIRC, more recent versions (1.2) do a better job at refreshing the cache.
posted by mcwetboy at 8:39 AM on March 9, 2004

I don't think it's limited to Safari. I see the same thing with Netscape 7 running on W2k. Sometimes even a refresh won't get me a new page.

I saw this problem once when we were in the midst of cranking up a major internal website. People would edit pages and save them, but they wouldn't see the edits when they loaded the page. It turned out the server (IIS running off NT4) was caching pages and wouldn't serve up the new stuff.
posted by joaquim at 11:25 AM on March 9, 2004

I have this same issue while viewing metafilter.com using Safari. First viewing of the day is fine. Throughout the day I'll refresh the main page to find new stories. Once I click on a story, then hit back to return to the main page, the page I get is an older cached page, not the up-to-date one that I just saw. If I refresh again, then the up-to-date page is shown.

I have only noticed this on metafilter.com. Other websites seem to work fine. I'm using the latest version of Safari.

I'm wondering if metafilter.com uses some kind of cookie timing (13 comments since you last visited) that either is invalid or confuses safari.
posted by jsonic at 11:41 AM on March 9, 2004

Best answer: Safari Enhancer from Lord of the Cows will eliminate the cache altogether in Safari, forcing new matter to be loaded every time.
posted by bradlands at 12:23 PM on March 9, 2004

Response by poster: Thanks, everyone. I downloaded the Enhancer, and it looks like it's solved the problem.

Thanks again.
posted by interrobang at 12:49 PM on March 9, 2004