How to prevent CSS caching on a web page?

You can append a random query parameter to the stylesheet url (for example via javascript or server side code). It will not change the css file that is being loaded, but it will prevent caching, because the browser detects a different url and will not load the cached stylesheet.

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://mysite/style.css?id=1234">

You can create class with GetVersion method which will return your application version (or for example build number or build date).

For asp.net application in markup you can then specify something like this:

<script src="Scripts/some.js?version=<%= Common.GetVersion%>" type="text/javascript"></script>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="~/styles/Style.css?version=<%= Common.GetVersion%>" />

This will force browser to reload files because part of URL to static files will be changed every build (or at least every version).

With no catching: Put changeable strings at the end of css path, as bellow:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css?2016-12-3:10 13 30"/>

Refresh when version changes:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css?v=1.1.0"/>

If you're using Chrome as your development browser, there are 2 options:

1) When you hold the reload page button down for a second, a menu will appear and offer the possibility to do a hard page reload.

2) In the Inspector settings, you can force the browser to never cache files.

I think it's easier, faster and less trouble to handle this issue by disabling caching on the browser than in the server configuration.

Since the ASP.net tag is also included in the question, I'd like to expand on Maxim Kornilov's answer (https://stackoverflow.com/a/12992813/903783) with how I used his idea of making the URLs webapp-build-specific on ASP.net MVC (his example was in ASP/ASP.net WebForms syntax instead of MVC's and Razor Pages' newer Razor syntax):

1) Added to the webapp's main class (was called MvcApplication) in Global.asax.cs

#region Versioning

public static string Version => typeof(MvcApplication).Assembly.GetName().Version.ToString(); //note: syntax requires C# version >=6

public static DateTime LastUpdated => File.GetLastWriteTime(typeof(MvcApplication).Assembly.Location);

#endregion

the someProperty => someReadOnlyExpression syntax is just shorthand for someProperty { get { return ... ;} } possible since C# 6

2) in its Content/_Layout.cshtml file I used to have the following to show build number and build datetime (based on the webapp's main assembly) on the page footer:

Version @ViewContext.Controller.GetType().Assembly.GetName().Version (@string.Format("{0:yyyy/MM/dd-HH:mm:ss}", @File.GetLastWriteTime(ViewContext.Controller.GetType().Assembly.Location)))

which I changed to the simpler:

Version @somewebappname.MvcApplication.Version (@string.Format("{0:yyyy/MM/dd-HH:mm:ss}", somewebappname.MvcApplication.LastUpdated))

3) it was loading the CSS via hardcoded link in _Layout.cshtml (still refactoring it) which I changed to:

<link href='@Url.Content("~/Content/Site.css?version=" + somewebappname.MvcApplication.Version)' rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> 

so if one right-clicks in the webpage and they do view source they see:

<link href='/Content/Site.css?version=2.1.5435.22633' rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> 

that is the CSS url is version specific thanks to the dummy parameter version

If a random number was used instead it would fetch the CSS at every page load which is usually undesired, especially if you are already pushing a new webapp build instead of individual page changes to the web server (so that you do have access to a build number that you can inject into URLs).

Note that to achieve auto-incrementing of build number, at Properties/AssemblyInfo.cs I have (see How to have an auto incrementing version number (Visual Studio)?):

// Version information for an assembly consists of the following four values:
//
//      Major Version
//      Minor Version 
//      Build Number
//      Revision
//
// You can specify all the values or you can default the Revision and Build Numbers 
// by using the '*' as shown below:
[assembly: AssemblyVersion("1.0.*")]
//[assembly: AssemblyFileVersion("1.0.*")] //don't use boh AssemblyVersion and AssemblyFileVersion with auto-increment

This can be done through a .htaccess file. Place this code in a file named .htaccess at the root of your website:

<filesMatch "\.(html|htm|js|css)$">
FileETag None
<ifModule mod_headers.c>
Header unset ETag
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=0, no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate"
Header set Pragma "no-cache"
Header set Expires "Wed, 11 Jan 1984 05:00:00 GMT"
</ifModule>
</filesMatch>

You can use random version id in your link. for example use this:

<link   href=<%="'mystyle.css?version="+ DateTime.Now.ToString("yyyyMMddhhmmss") +"'"%>   rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>

where myStyle.css is stylesheet file and DateTime.Now.ToString("yyyyMMddhhmmss") function used for generate random different version id. By using this random version id,browser forced to reload your css.

instead of writing <link> tag using html just use php code. inside <link> tag at the end use php mt_rand() function which will produce a random number and thus your stylesheet will never get cached. <?php echo "<link rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' href='style.css?'".mt_rand().">"; ?>

If you are in Google Chrome simply press CTRL + F5 to force said refresh. The CSS will be updated to how it is on your local machine or server. You can also use a .htaccess file, but that is more of a permanent solution to a possibly temporary problem. CSS caching is good for faster page loading, so I do not recommend disabling it entirely.

I appreciate the user who asked this query. Even today (2025), I faced a similar problem. Here is the solution which I implemented,

<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?= $baseUrl ?>/css/breadcrumb.css?v=<?= time(); ?>">

This fetches the real-time css from the database server rather than retrieving it from cache.

The cause of this issue may be any of the following,

• Server cache
• Web browser cache