I'm working on a complicated site that has a lot of css files and js files that load on every page. I'm working on a single css using Chrome's developer tools. Once the css is mostly correct in developer tools, (Element tab, Styles side bar), the css is copied to a local css file and then uploaded to the web server. Since only a single css file has been modified it would be faster to reload a single css file instead of hard refreshing and reloading the entire site including images, js, and css, etc.
The site has an option to minify the css file and combine it with the other css files, creating one single very large css file. That option is turned off while in development mode. Adding a version number to the css file name isn't the trick I'm looking for.
Is it possible in Chrome Developer tools to click on a source file and refresh only that file?
This is a bit of a hack, but I think it'll work for your scenario.
When I initially load an example page, you can see three CSS requests:
I want to refresh the devsite-googler-buttons.css file, so I find it in my DOM Tree:
(Command+F on Mac or Control+F on Windows / Linux opens up that search panel at the bottom of the Elements panel... makes it easier to find stuff in a big DOM)
Right-click, select Edit as HTML, and then append a random query string to the end of the link:
And in the Network panel, you can see that the file was re-downloaded:
See also: Konrad's answer provides some handy code for automating this via a Snippet.
It might be handy, in your situation, to automate it a bit:
function reloadCSS() {
const links = document.getElementsByTagName('link');
Array.from(links)
.filter(link => link.rel.toLowerCase() === 'stylesheet' && link.href)
.forEach(link => {
const url = new URL(link.href, location.href);
url.searchParams.set('forceReload', Date.now());
link.href = url.href;
});
}
reloadCSS();
What this function does is it forces all CSS files to be reloaded by appending current time to their URLs.
You can modify it to target a specific file. You can run it from console, via DevTools 'snippets' functionality or make it into an extension.
If you don't mind refreshing the page, but don't want to re-download all resources, try the following.
Open the css file in a new tab. (You can right click css files from the Chrome developer tools and choose "open in new tab");
Hard-refresh this tab (ctrl/cmd + f5);
Soft-refresh the page (f5 or ctrl/cms + r).
According to me only Live editing is the only possible way what you are looking for I suppose. There is no way to refresh a single css file.
The current workflow for our designer is:
Opens web page and edit the CSS
Write up all the CSS changes in an issue
Is there a way for chrome to save the 'diff' of the CSS and export it without using workspaces?
As of Chrome 65, Local Overrides can help with this. Check your Chrome version at chrome://version. If you don't have 65 yet, you can use Chrome Canary.
Open Sources.
Click Local Overrides tab.
Click Select folder for overrides and choose a destination.
Make your changes in the Styles pane on Elements panel or Editor pane in Sources panel. Chrome saves the changed files to the specified location.
GOTCHAS!!!
Changes made in the DOM Tree on the Elements panel don't get saved.
Neither do changes made in the Styles pane when the source of the CSS rules is a <style> tag in HTML. At least in Chrome 65. There's rumors that this may get fixed in 66.
Not sure if that's what you want, but...
You can edit the page from inspector (ctrl+shift+I) and after done with all your changes, just click on the stylesheet link at your left and copy everything you need
When I use sourcemap with DevTools for CSS, is it possible to change styles without losing the link to the preprocessing file?
More explanation
Step 1 : I inspect an element, I see its style and I can see a link "global.scss", perfect.
Step 2 : I change a style (like a pixel under), and I lose my "global.scss" link, now is "global.css" and I need to reload my page!
No, that is not possible, see https://developer.chrome.com/devtools/docs/css-preprocessors:
Changes made in an external editor are not detected by DevTools until the Sources tab containing the associated source file regains focus. Also, manual editing of a CSS file generated by the Sass/LESS/other compiler will break the source map association until the page is reloaded
This is an issue reported on chromium bug tracker, there you can follow the progress https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=257778#makechanges
EDIT 1
Finally this issue is currently resolved in Chrome Canary :-)
Link to confirmation: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=257778#c61
EDIT 2
Source map finally landed in Chrome
I'm currently editing a .css file inside of Visual Studio 2012 (in debug mode). I'm using Chrome as my browser. When I make changes to my application's .css file inside of Visual Studio and save, refreshing the page will not load with the updated change in my .css file. I think the .css file is still cached.
I have tried:
CTRL / F5
In Visual Studio 2012,
Go to project properties, Web tab
Choose Start External Program in the Start Action section
Paste or browse to the path for Google Chrome (Mine is C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe)
In the Command line arguments box put -incognito
Used the Chrome developer tools, click on the "gear" icon, checked "Disable Cache."
Nothing seems to work unless I manually stop debugging, (close out of Chrome), restart the application (in debug).
Is there any way to force Chrome to always reload all css changes and reload the .css file?
Update:
1. In-line style changes in my .aspx file are picked up when I refresh. But changes in a .css file does not.
2. It is an ASP.NET MVC4 app so I click on a hyperlink, which does a GET. Doing that, I don't see a new request for the stylesheet. But clicking F5, the .css file is reloaded and the Status code (on the network tab) is 200.
To force chrome to reaload css and js:
Windows option 1: CTRL + SHIFT + R
Windows option 2: SHIFT + F5
OS X: ⌘ + SHIFT + R
Updated as stated by #PaulSlocum in the comments (and many confirmed)
Original answer:
Chrome changed behavior. Ctrl + R will do it.
On OS X: ⌘ + R
If you have problems reloading css/js files, open the inspector
(CTRL + SHIFT + C) before
doing the reload.
There are much more complicated solutions, but a very easy, simple one is just to add a random query string to your CSS include.
Such as src="/css/styles.css?v={random number/string}"
If you're using php or another server-side language, you can do this automatically with time(). So it would be styles.css?v=<?=time();?>
This way, the query string will be new every single time. Like I said, there are much more complicated solutions that are more dynamic, but in testing purposes this method is top (IMO).
[READ THE UPDATE BELOW]
Easiest way I've found is in Chrome DevTools settings.
Click on the gear icon (or 3 vertical dots, in more recent versions) in the top-right of DevTools to open the "Settings" dialog.
In there, tick the box: "Disable cache (while DevTools is open)"
UPDATE: Now this setting has been moved. It can be found in the "Network" tab, it's a checkbox labeled "Disable Cache".
You are dealing with the problem of browser cache.
Disable the cache in the page itself. That will not save supporting file of page in browser/cache.
<meta http-equiv="cache-control" content="max-age=0" />
<meta http-equiv="cache-control" content="no-cache" />
<meta http-equiv="expires" content="0" />
<meta http-equiv="expires" content="Tue, 01 Jan 1990 12:00:00 GMT" />
This code you require/need to insert in head tag of the page you are debugging, or in head tag of master page of your site
This will not allow browser to cache file, eventually files will not be stored in browser temporary files, so no cache, so no reloading will be required :)
I am sure this will do :)
In my case,in Chrome DevTools settings, just set "Disable cache (while DevTools is open)" doesn't work, it needs to check "Enable CSS source maps" and "Auto-reload generated CSS",which are listed in source group, to make this cache issue go away.
i had faced same problem here! but I sure,my resolution is better than all above examples,just do this,
Pull up the Chrome developer console by pressing F12
Right click on the reload button at the top of the browser and select "Empty Cache and Hard Reload."
That`s it!
Press SHIFT+F5.
It is working for me with Chrome version 54.
With macOS I can force Chrome to reload the CSS file in by doing
⌘ + SHIFT + R
Found this answer buried in the comments here but it deserved more exposure.
I'm using Edge Version 81.0.416.64 (Official build) (64-bit) and its based on the Chromium open source project.
Press F12 to get into Dev Tools.
Click Network Tab
Check Disable cache
Current version of Chrome (55.x) does not reload all resources when you reload the page (Command + R) - and that is not useful for debugging the .css file.
Command + R works fine if you want to debug only the .html, .php, .etc files, and is faster because works with local/cached resources (.css, .js).
To manually delete browser's cache for each debug iteration is not convenient.
Procedure to force reload .css file on Mac (Keyboard Shortcut / Chrome):
Command + Shift + R
I know it's an old question, but if anyone is still looking how to reload just a single external css/js file, the easiest way now in Chrome is:
Go to Network tab in DevTools
Right click on the resource and select Replay XHR to repeat the request
Make sure that the Disable cache option is selected to force the reload.
For macOS Chrome:
Open developers tools cmd+alt+i
Click three dots on the top right corner in developers tools
Click settings
Scroll down to Network
Enable Disable cache (while DevTools is open) see screenshot:
Why is it needed to refresh the whole page? Just refresh only css files without reloading the page. It is very helpful when, for example, you have to wait a long response from DB. Once you get data from DB and populate the page, then edit your css files and reload them in Chrome (or in Firefox). To do that you need to install CSS Reloader extension. Firefox version is also available.
You can copy paste this script into Chrome console and it forces your CSS scripts to reload every 3 seconds. Sometimes I find it useful when I'm improving CSS styles.
var nodes = document.querySelectorAll('link');
[].forEach.call(nodes, function (node) {
node.href += '?___ref=0';
});
var i = 0;
setInterval(function () {
i++;
[].forEach.call(nodes, function (node) {
node.href = node.href.replace(/\?\_\_\_ref=[0-9]+/, '?___ref=' + i);
});
console.log('refreshed: ' + i);
},3000);
I solved by this simple trick.
<script type="text/javascript">
var style = 'assets/css/style.css?'+Math.random();;
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
document.write('<link href="'+style+'" rel="stylesheet">');
</script>
Still an issue.
Using parameters like "..css?something=random-value" changes nothing in my customer-support experience. Only name changes works.
Another take on the file renaming. I use URL Rewrite in IIS. Sometimes Helicon's Isapi Rewrite.
Add new rule.
+ Name: lame-chrome-fix.
+ Pattern: styles/(\w+)_(\d+)
+ Rewrite URL: /{R:1}.css
Note: I reserve the use of undercase to separate the name from the random number. Could be anything else.
Example:
<link href="/styles/template_<%
Response.Write( System.DateTime.UtcNow.ToString("ddmmyyhhmmss")); %>"
type="text/css" />
(No styles folder it's just a name part of the pattern)
Output code as:
<link href="/styles/template_285316115328"
rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
Redirect as:
(R:1 = template)
/template.css
Only the explanation is long.
Hold down Ctrl and click the Reload button. Or, Hold down Ctrl and press F5. just open the Chrome Dev Tools by pressing F12. Once the chrome dev tools are open, just right click on the refresh button and a menu will drop down.
Just had this problem where one person running Chrome (on a Mac) suddenly stopped loading the CSS file. CMD + R did NOT work at all. I don't like the suggestions above that force a permanent reload on the production system.
What worked was changing the name of the CSS file in the HTML file (and renaming the CSS file of course). This forced Chrome to go get the latest CSS file.
If you are using Sublime Text 3, using a build system to open the file opens the most current version and provides a convenient way to load it via [CTRL + B]
To set up a build system that opens the file in chrome:
Go to 'Tools'
Hover your mouse over 'build system'. At the bottom of the list brought up, click 'New Build System...'
In the new build system file type this:
{"cmd": [ "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Google\\Chrome\\Application\\chrome.exe", "$file"]}
**provided the path stated above in the first set of quotes is the path to where chrome is located on your computer, if it isn't simply find the location of chrome and replace the path in the first set of quotes with the path to chrome on your computer.
The most simplest way to achieve your goal is to open a new incognito window in your chrome or private window in firefox which will by default, not cache.
You can use this for development purposes so that you don't have to inject some random cache preventing code in your project.
If you are using IE then may god help you!
Ctrl + F5
Shift + F5
Both work
Easiest way on Safari 11.0 macOS SIERRA 10.12.6:
Reload Page From Origin, you can use help to find out where in the menu it is located, or you can use the shortcut option(alt) + command + R.
One option would be to add your working directory to your Chrome "workspace" which allows Chrome to map local files to those on the page. It will then detect changes in the local files, and update the page in real-time.
This can be done from the "Sources" tab of Devtools:
Click on the "Filesystem" tab in the file browser sidebar, then click the +Plus sign button to "Add folder to workspace" - you will be prompted with a banner at the top of the screen to allow or deny local file access:
Once allowed, the folder will appear in the "Filesystem" tab on the left. Chrome will now attempt to associate each file in the filesystem tab with a file in the page. Sometimes you will need to reload the page once for this to function correctly.
Once this is done, Chrome should have no trouble picking up local changes, in fact you won't even need to reload to get the changes in many cases, and you can make edits to the local files directly from Devtools (which is extremely useful for CSS, it even comments out CSS lines when you toggle the checkboxes in the Styles tab).
More information on Workspaces in Chrome.
Chrome/firefox/safari/IE will reload the entire page by these shortcuts
Ctrl + R (OR) Ctrl + F5
Hope it may helps you!.
If you are using SiteGround as your hosting company and none of the other solutions have worked, try this:
From the cPanel, go to "SITE IMPROVEMENT TOOLS" and click "SuperCacher." On the following page, click the "Flush Cache" button.