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firefox incognito browser will not clear cache

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I'm currently working on building a website, and while testing several of the front end parameters I'm just hitting a wall with firefox incognito's ability to clear the cache.

After I clear the cache, it's obvious that it's worked on the regular browser, but no matter how many times I clear it, how long I wait (this has been a 2 day ordeal), or how much of the history, cookies, cache, etc that I clear, the private browser information will not clear. Closing all windows, restarting the computer doesn't work.

I've changed aspects to a form and other aspects to a particular page, and am in the middle of doing a conflict test so every one of my plugins are off so the site looks 100% different on the main browser, but the private browser is stuck in the past.

Thoughts?

I'm currently working on building a website, and while testing several of the front end parameters I'm just hitting a wall with firefox incognito's ability to clear the cache. After I clear the cache, it's obvious that it's worked on the regular browser, but no matter how many times I clear it, how long I wait (this has been a 2 day ordeal), or how much of the history, cookies, cache, etc that I clear, the private browser information will not clear. Closing all windows, restarting the computer doesn't work. I've changed aspects to a form and other aspects to a particular page, and am in the middle of doing a conflict test so every one of my plugins are off so the site looks 100% different on the main browser, but the private browser is stuck in the past. Thoughts?

All Replies (4)

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So if you are viewing your site in a regular (non-private) window, and you right-click an internal link and Open Link in New Private Window, you get an older site? That's very strange.

To reload the current page bypassing the cache, you can use either

  • Shift+click the Reload toolbar button
  • Ctrl+Shift+R
  • Ctrl+F5

That should work in any window, but Firefox can be stubborn about updating CSS files. A while back I created an add-on to address that.

Private windows only use the memory cache (not the disk cache), and when you close the last private window, the cache should be cleared. Restarting the computer definitely should destroy all the private windows and their temporary data. If you see ANY private window data lingering from a previous session, your "private" windows might not really be private windows.

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Note that Firefox may show you the stats for the disk and memory cache used in regular mode and you can't clear this data if you are in PB mode. You would have to leave PB mode temporarily and switch to regular mode to be able to clear this data, so do not get confused.

See also the about:cache page and this article.

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To jscher20000:

No no, let me re-explain.

The issue is that when I make any sort of update to a given page, whether it's adding picture or changing some text or anything, my firefox developer private browser will not update it. But, if I use firefox developer, firefox, chrome, etc, it updates live.

the only way I can seem to get my firefox developer private browser to update to the current state of the page is to clear the cache and restart all firefox developer and firefox developer private browser windows. It's inconvenient.

For several months I've been able to edit a window on the FD browser on the left, and have a private FD browser on the right that I can continuously refresh as I'm editing and have never had any issues. No idea what's going on here.

Thanks for the help!

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You can reload webpage(s) and bypass the cache to refresh possibly outdated or corrupted files.

  • hold down the Shift key and left-click the Reload button
  • press "Ctrl + F5" or press "Ctrl + Shift + R" (Windows,Linux)
  • press "Command + Shift + R" (Mac)