How to Clear Chrome’s Cache for a Single Site on Android (Without Nuking Everything)

You’ve updated your CSS, but Chrome on Android keeps serving the old version. Your long cache times are doing their job — just a little too well. Here’s how to deal with it without wiping your entire browser cache.

Clear Cache for Just One Site

The cleanest way to clear cache for a single origin on Android Chrome:

1. Open the page in Chrome
2. Tap the lock/info icon in the address bar
3. Tap Site settings
4. Scroll down and tap Clear & reset

This clears cookies and cached data for just that site — nothing else in your browser is touched.

The Nuclear Option (With a Limiter)

If you’d rather go through the main settings, you can limit the damage:

1. Tap the three dots menu (⋮) → Settings
2. Go to Privacy and security → Clear browsing data
3. Tap Advanced and uncheck everything except Cached images and files
4. Set the Time range to the last hour or day to minimise collateral damage

What About Force-Refresh?

Unlike desktop Chrome (where Ctrl+Shift+R does a hard reload), Android Chrome doesn’t have a built-in force-refresh shortcut. The site settings method above is your best equivalent.

The Real Fix: Cache Busting

The best long-term solution is to make this a non-problem in the first place. If you append a version string or content hash to your CSS filename, browsers will always treat it as a new file and fetch it fresh — no cache clearing required.

The simplest approach is a query string:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css?v=2">

Even better, use a content hash (most build tools like Vite and Webpack can do this automatically):

<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.abc123.css">

With a hash in the filename, you get the best of both worlds: aggressive long-term caching for unchanged files, and instant updates when anything changes.