Q: Problem with safari's cache in ios 5

Yep it's still there at 5.1.1... Admittedly, around 5.1 things got better.  Safari itself now seems to be very tolerant of JS and CSS changes.  I can update a JavaScript source file on the server, and the next time I refresh the web page in Safari, the updated code is immediately loaded.  The same can't be said for links that are added to the Home Screen.  They seem to "lock-in" to the HTML and JS that was present at the time the link was created.  There still seems to be no way to get these links to refresh.  Even deleting and re-creating them doesn't work... I'd like to suggest to our users to add our website as a link to their home screen for better functionality, but this bug stifles that option.  If they added our site as a home screen link, they would never receive any site updates...

Yes. This is the behavior I have seen too. If its just Safari the cache is replaced when the user refreshes the base web page.

But if the page has been added to the Home screen, there is no rhyme or reason for it to get refreshed. Sometimes loading the same page from the not Home screen version does clear it but often not. This is javascript code and also CSS code. 

Very frustrating that Apple does not see fit to fix this important feature required to fully support web based applications via webit etc.

Hello, for my restaurant ordering system i had this issue for a long time now and found that some cache was used for the css and js files when it was in fullscreen mode added to the homescreen.

Every update gave me some issues and it disappeared after a day or so.

So my workarround is to set the time of the ipads that have this issue to one or two days in the future and then load the webapp using the homescreen icon. The new css and js files are loaded. Then set the date back to the actual date.

Hope this will be fixed in a future release. I have site where 50+ ipads are in operation and have to a lot of work when these issues arise. One of my client is okinii, japanese sushi and grill, in germany.

Are there any updates to this?  I'm trying to develop my website to be compatible with iOS but I can't do it since I can't clear the cache.  I've tried everything mentioned here, but it just won't pick up my css changes.

Isn't there a developer area to post regarding this? I am curious if other developers have managed workarounds (which is still inexcusible). I imagine this is a stupid question, but couldn't you reload the CSS via Javascript? I presume you would have to essentially have an entirely JS based site then.

Javascript has the same problem. Even the index.html file is sometimes cached and certainly other linked files are.

I know of no programatic way to eliminate the problem.  Looking for a solution too.

I'm still working on learning the tech, but I would think a static stub that uses AJAX to load the rest of the site might work. A painfully tall order if you don't have your site set up that way.

I have the exact opposite problem people are talking about here.  I have an iPad 1 with iOS 5.1.1.  Travel to and from work is 45 mins on the subway.  Currently I'm trying to learn PHP and load several pages from the ww3school.  I get on the subway, read the one page and when I go to the next tab, it's blank because it's trying to refresh and there is no connection.  I didn't ask it to refresh.  It should definitely not do so if there is no connection.  Now my 40 mins is spent re-reading all the ads on the subway and craning to read over other people's shoulders.  Is there any way to stop it from doing this?

Chantal, the problem isn't the cache but the iPad 1. It has a very limiited about of RAM so it cannot store everything that's loaded in the Safari tabs. It doesn't have a very large stored (disk) cache and alas you cannot set that. So, it dumps and reloads. Your best bet is to use a computer (Mac is easiest) and print to PDF then email or load those to iBooks. (if you use email to load, you have to open the enclosure in iBooks to store it there) That will guarantee local use.

iOS 6 is now out and this problem Still exists. CSS and JS fail to clear from the cache and reload from the updated webpage in a homescreen webapp shortcut. I have to use ridme's "fix" to set the time foreward and back again to clear the cache so the webpage updates.

Has anyone found a better solution to this yet? I figured Apple would have fixed it, but I wonder if they even consider it an issue at this point.

Here's how I deal with this. Since I have control over my test environment on the server (call the directory 'test'), I just do

cd ..

ln -s test test2

Then I load the URL with test2 instead of test. This forces Safari to thnk all the javaScript is new. You can repeat this as many times as needed, and go back to the original when the cache finally becomes stale.

Hello everyone,

An issue such as this should be resolved by now, a safari/IOS fix should be in place.

Regardles ... since I support some business related websites for some clients that actually strictly use the IPAD I had to do something. These business websites which I support use asynchronous javascript/jquery calls to the server to update the pages without posting, because of the Safari issue the pages would NOT update(as if the JS code was blocked it seemed to me). I tried coding around my pages to bypass the issue but nothing worked and besides in this case it is bad practice to write custom code in a website as a workaround to a browser issue because the new version miss-behaves when it used to work on previous Safari/IOS versions and my websites pages behave properly in the current versions of IE, Firefox and Chrome.

In the end I was able to resolve the problem for my clients business websites by having my clients migrate to Google Chrome for IPAD.

Well, I refresh the app restarting ipad after clean cache and deleting it from desktop. Then I adding again via safari. I have an iPhone an most of the testing I do on it, the iPad 1 is only for testing screen size and other particular test for that device

iOS 7 and the problem is *STILL* there!!! This is just ridiculous!

iOS 7.0.4 and the issue is still there.