Are you trying the F5 Refresh Shortcut on Mac, and it’s not working? Or maybe you are trying to clear the Chrome browser’s cache content. If you recently moved from a Windows machine to an Apple machine with the macOS, then it’s pretty likely you faced the issue of the F5 refresh key not working on a Mac. That’s because the refresh command on Mac is different.
The Refresh Shortcut on Mac
The mac equivalent of the refresh shortcut is to use “Command ⌘ + R” together to refresh a web page. If you use a Mac long-term, it probably makes sense to stick with the Command ⌘ +R option and learn it with all the other Mac-specific commands and shortcuts that are inevitable when you switch to a new OS.
On the other hand, if you frequently switch between Windows and macOS machines and like to keep things the same, especially if you are into web development work, then there is an easy way to set the F5 shortcut to refresh Chrome on macOS.
How to set F5 Refresh Shortcut on Mac
You can follow the steps below to set F5 Shortcut to refresh Chrome on a Mac computer.
Total Time: 2 minutes
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Go to Keyboard Options in System Preferences
Go to System Preferences and click on Keyboard
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Selecting Shortcuts Option
In the Keyboard options, select the Shortcuts tab
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Selecting App Shortcuts
- ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER ADVERTISEMENT -In the Shortcuts section, select the App Shortcuts in the list
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Adding a new shortcut
In the Apps Shortcut, click on the “+” sign to add a new shortcut. This will open up a popup to define the shortcut values.
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Setting the values
– Application – Select the Application “Google Chrome” from the dropdown
– Menu Title “Reload This Page“
– Keyboard Shortcut – F5 (click in the field, and then press F5)Click on Add to proceed.
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The F5 Shortcut to refresh Chrome is now Set
And that’s it. Your new shortcut F5 key to Reload or Refresh the browser web page has been set.
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Check Reload this Page Menu option
If you select the View menu in the Chrome Web Browser Menu, you will see that the Reload This Page option now shows F5 as the shortcut.
Remember, you can use this method to change other app shortcuts or function keys that you might want to use, like the “Force Reload This Page” (Shift F5 in windows), but we recommend you do this only for shortcuts that you use extensively.
You can also use this method to set F5 as the refresh button in other browsers like Firefox, Edge, and Brave.
Do note that in some of the Macs with a backlit keyboard, the F5 function is used to decrease the brightness of the backlight. In this case, you will have to use the Fn Function key and F5 to refresh chrome on Mac. To avoid this, you can go to System Preferences > Keyboard and check the box against the option Use F1, F2, etc., as Standard Function Keys.
If you are a heavy chrome user, you may also want to read our article on The Best Chrome Extensions To Supercharge Your Browsing.
The Hard Refresh Shortcut on a Mac Keyboard
If you need to do a hard refresh or force reload of a page, the hard refresh shortcut is Shift + Command ⌘ + R. A hard refresh will bypass the browser cache and do a fresh reload of the page from the website you are visiting, instead of from the browser cache.
You can also do a hard refresh by pressing the down Shift key and hitting the reload button on the browser navigation bar.
Popular Mac Keyboard Shortcuts
If you will be using a Mac regularly, here are a few basic combinations or key shortcuts that most users will find handy while getting their heads around a macOS.
- Command ⌘ + X = Cut a selected item to the clipboard
- Command ⌘ + C = Copy a selected item to the clipboard
- Command ⌘ + V = Paste a selected item from the clipboard into your document or application
- Command ⌘ + Z = Undo the previous command
- Command ⌘ + A = Select all contents in a document or application
- Command ⌘ + C = Print the Document
- Command ⌘ + S = Save the Document
- Command ⌘ + F = find items within a document
As you can see, in the ones listed above, the shortcuts are similar to windows, with the critical difference being using the Command ⌘ key instead of the Ctrl key used in windows.
You can find the complete Mac Keyboard shortcuts on the Apple Website.
it is capitalized, “Reload This Page” in current chrome