This is a bit extreme for just trying to update a single windows contents, but if you find the prior methods are not working, or if you require every single window to be refreshed, this may be the easiest solution. The third option is to forcibly refresh every Finder window by manually relaunching the Finder. How to Refresh All Finder Windows by Relaunching Finder in Mac OS X In these cases, the easiest way to refresh a root Finder window would be to alter the keyboard shortcuts to jump to a consistent directory like Applications, then back again:Īny of the command shortcuts found under the “Go” menu work, but Command+Shift+A for Applications is easy to remember, and Command+[ always goes back a folder. The obvious limitation with the aforementioned parent directory trick is if you’re in a folder at the root of a directory, with no parent to jump to. How to Refresh a root Finder Window by Jumping Around This has the same end effect of refreshing the Finder window contents, though rather than going to the parent directory you’ll go back to the prior working directory, and forward to return to where you started. Command+Up Arrow followed by Command+Down ArrowĪnother option is to just click the Back button followed by the Forward button:.How to Refresh a Finder Window by Jumping to Parent Directory & Backįor folders with a hierarchy, going to the parent directory than back to the present working directly is often the fastest, which can be done quickly with the following keyboard shortcut: Because there isn’t a direct method to refresh Finder windows, you can use one of these tricks we’ll discuss below to go about refreshing Finder window contents instead.

Mac refresh shortcut