Hard Reset

About

Hard Reset — Site-Specific Cache Clearing for Chrome

Stop clearing your entire browser cache just to fix one broken site. Hard Reset gives you targeted control to clear cached files, cookies, local storage, service workers, and more for the current site only — without touching anything else.

Built for developers, designers, and anyone who's ever stared at a stale page wondering why their changes aren't showing up.

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THREE RELOAD MODES

Normal Reload
Standard page refresh. Cached assets like CSS, JS, and images are reused if they haven't expired. Same as hitting Cmd+R (or Ctrl+R on Windows).

Hard Reload
Forces the browser to re-download all assets from the server, bypassing the disk cache entirely. Same as Shift+Cmd+R (or Shift+Ctrl+R on Windows).

Empty Cache & Hard Reload
The nuclear option. Deletes all cached files, cookies, local storage, IndexedDB, service workers, and cache storage for the current site, then performs a hard reload. This is a full reset — you'll be logged out of that site and every asset will be fetched fresh from the server. Nothing on other sites is affected.

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AUTO-CLEAR SCHEDULING

Set a recurring interval to automatically clear a site's cache in the background. Choose from 1 hour, 5 hours, 10 hours, 15 hours, or 24 hours. Settings are saved per-site, so you can have different schedules for different domains. Perfect for development and staging environments where stale cache is a constant headache.

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ACTIVITY LOG

A built-in log panel shows exactly what was cleared and when. Every step is timestamped so you always know what happened — cached files removed, service workers cleared, cookies wiped. No more guessing whether it actually worked.

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SMART DOMAIN DETECTION

Hard Reset automatically detects the domain of your active tab. When you open the popup, you'll see the site's favicon and hostname right at the top, confirming exactly which site you're about to clear. Everything is scoped to that single origin.

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WHAT GETS CLEARED

When you use Empty Cache & Hard Reload, the following data is removed for the current site only:

Cached files (CSS, JavaScript, images, fonts, etc.)
Cookies (session tokens, login state, preferences)
Local storage
IndexedDB databases
Service workers
Cache storage (used by Progressive Web Apps)
No other sites are affected. Your Gmail, YouTube, banking sessions — all untouched.

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WHO IS THIS FOR?

Web developers tired of stale CSS and JS on staging sites
Designers reviewing changes that won't show up
QA testers who need a clean slate between test runs
HubSpot, WordPress, and CMS developers dealing with aggressive caching
Anyone who has ever whispered "have you tried clearing your cache?" to a client
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PERMISSIONS — AND WHY WE NEED THEM

We believe in transparency. Here's exactly what each permission does:

browsingData — Required to clear cache, cookies, local storage, and service workers for a specific site.

activeTab — Reads the current tab's URL so we know which site to clear. We never read page content.

tabs — Reloads the tab after clearing the cache.

storage — Saves your per-site auto-clear preferences locally. Nothing is sent to any server.

alarms — Powers the scheduled auto-clear intervals.

Hard Reset does not collect, transmit, or store any personal data. Everything stays on your machine.

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LIGHTWEIGHT AND FAST

No frameworks. No dependencies. No tracking. No analytics. Just vanilla JavaScript doing exactly what it says. The entire extension is under 15KB.

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OPEN SOURCE

Hard Reset is open source under the MIT license. View the source code, report issues, or contribute on GitHub:
https://github.com/monstrousai/hard-reset

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SUPPORT

Questions or feedback? Reach us at [email protected]

Made by Monster Creative — https://www.monstercreative.com