: Pressing F5 while on your desktop will refresh the icons and active windows. File Explorer : Use F5 to update the file list in a folder.

If you'd like, I can provide more specific shortcuts for or particular software like Excel or Photoshop.

The universal keyboard shortcut to refresh most applications, particularly web browsers on Windows, is . For macOS users, the standard equivalent is Command + R .

These shortcuts aren't just for the internet.

Sometimes a standard refresh isn't enough because your browser stores (caches) parts of the page to load it faster. A forces the browser to ignore the cache and download everything from the server again—useful for developers or when a site isn't updating properly.