How to clear/flush the DNS cache in Google Chrome?

Question

As you probably know Google Chrome has its own internal DNS cache. Is there a way to clear it without having to wait for the time out or close the browser?

score 1533 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 05 '15 at 10:42

1533

Navigate to chrome://net-internals/#dns and press the "Clear host cache" button.

edited Mar 05 '15 at 10:42

Community

1

answered Oct 26 '10 at 22:16

ephemient

25,622

score 263 · Answer 2 · edited Aug 24 '13 at 13:20

263

Sometimes you need to flush the socket pools after flushing the DNS:

chrome://net-internals/#sockets

edited Aug 24 '13 at 13:20

Peter Mortensen

12,326

answered Jun 25 '13 at 08:38

Bojan Hrnkas

2,988
2
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score 65 · Answer 3 · edited Feb 03 '14 at 19:30

"Navigate to chrome://net-internals/#dns" doesn't work in the Google Chrome browser, at least on my system. Looks like this solution maybe works for the Google Chrome OS, but not the Google Chrome browser more generally speaking. For me the link redirects here:
The Chromium Projects

It appears "Empty the Cache" is the better solution. Also note my browser says "Preferences" rather than "Options"

Via http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?tid=026b6a1d9151a6e3&hl=en

"Go to tools -> options -> Under the hood -> Clear Browsing data and check 'empty the cache' and click on clear browsing data. Yes yes, I know, it is not the DNS cache I would expect it to clear, but hey it seems to. And now it works for me."

score 58 · Answer 4 · edited Aug 05 '17 at 05:22

Clicking "clear host cache" in chrome://net-internals/#dns should do it for Google Chrome, but there are other DNS caches to consider on your machine.

Windows:

ipconfig /flushdns

OS X pre-10.7 (before Lion):

sudo dscacheutil -flushcache

OS X 10.7–10.9 (Lion, Mountain Lion, Mavericks):

sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

OS X 10.10+ (Yosemite):

sudo discoveryutil mdnsflushcache

OS X 10.11, 10.12+ (El Capitan, Sierra):

sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

Your router may be caching the DNS as well (restart it or read the manual). The ultimate test is to use dig, but this uses your network's DNS host, not the authoritative server by default:

dig superuser.com

To query right from the source, try something like:

dig superuser.com @ns1.serverfault.com

score 34 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 20 '14 at 01:59

In OS X 10.9.1 w/ Chrome 32 I needed to both clear the host cache and flush the socket pools to get Chrome to refresh the DNS cache:

Navigate to chrome://net-internals/#dns and click "Clear Host Cache"
Navigate to chrome://net-internals/#sockets abd click "Flush Socket Pools"

score 23 · Answer 6 · edited Mar 01 '17 at 21:27

23

This worked for me: Empty and clear the disk cache

In Chrome, click on the wrench icon, and then Options. Go to Under the Hood tab. Click on the Clear browsing data button under the Privacy section. Select just the "Empty the cache" check box, and then click on the Clear browsing data button.

This worked immediately - I didn't even have to close the browser.

edited Mar 01 '17 at 21:27

Peter Mortensen

12,326

answered May 10 '11 at 22:18

Josh

239

score 18 · Answer 7 · edited Aug 24 '13 at 13:19

As far as I can find, in recent versions of Chrome (I'm on 26.0.1410.43), there's no (reliable) way to do it, at least not on a Mac. None of the suggestions on this page have worked for me.

My situation is that I've added a hosts file entry, but Chrome is still going to the IP address returned by DNS. Firefox works correctly.

In fact, the chrome://net-internals/#dns page is simply lying about the IP address for me. It shows the IP from the hosts entry, but that is clearly not where it's actually getting the site from.

score 13 · Answer 8 · answered Dec 12 '13 at 20:12

I know this is an old question but I got annoyed by same the complaints as others: even after clearing the cache it can still take a minute or two for the new DNS changes to kick in.

There are a few ways around it. After clearing the DNS cache through chrome://net-internals/#dns (or using an extension that achieves the same result):

Open an incognito window and the new DNS mappings for the domain will be effective immediately.
Clear the browser cache. This is cumbersome if you use your browser for regular browsing. You can run a separate instance of the browser as another user and clearing the cache in that account will not interfere with your regular browsing cache. I haven't tried this but it should work.
Hit CTRL+F5. I had to keep CTRL+F5 pressed for about one second which consecutively reloads the page a couple of times. This is odd behavior but it works and is also just as effective. This is my preferred approach.

Ideally there ought be a plugin that can purge the DNS and cache (specifically just the document cache and not the cookie cache) but I didn't find anything of the sort yet.

UPDATE: On OSX the Gas Mask application is excelling for switching between hosts files and along with the #2 workaround, it's quite effective.

score 9 · Answer 9 · edited Mar 01 '17 at 21:25

Chrome_Hosts_Flush_Util:

It is to resolve the problem that Chrome can't use the correct hosts after modifying the hosts file because of Chrome using socket pools.

Chrome maintains long connections in the connection pool to speed up. When Chrome finds that a request can reuse a connection in the connection pool, it won't go through the DNS again, thus, we always perceive that Chrome won't respond to a hosts change immediately.

Chrome has provided an interface for flushing the connection pool in the chrome://net-internals/#sockets tab, but I think it's annoying that I have to go to the tab first, and click so a small button with a trackpad.

I found that when clicking the button of flush socket pool, Chrome executes two key JavaScript methods.

g_browser.sendFlushSocketPools();
g_browser.checkForUpdatedInfo(false);

So I encapsulate these two methods in an AppleScript script which can be converted to an OS X application or Alfred workflow which both can be invoked easily.

Bojan Hrnkas · Answer 10 · 2020-11-11T17:19:04.417

7

5 years later...

Chrome now has an option to disable cache.

Press F12 (or Ctrl+Shift+I) to call up the DevTools.
Go to Network Tab
Check the "Disable Cache" box.
Reload the page
Right-click the reload button so that the menu opens. Select “Empty Cache and Hard Reload”.
Enable cache in DevTools.

This also solves the redirect cache (chrome caches permanent redirects)

Source: mwender.com

edited Nov 11 '20 at 17:19

answered Jul 28 '20 at 13:54

Bojan Hrnkas

2,988
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score 6 · Answer 11 · edited Jun 14 '12 at 18:19

I tried to flush the DNS cache in so many ways, but nothing worked for me. At last, I planned to change my DNS entry. This trick will work for all people who access Internet through high speed LAN connection.

On a LAN connection, a user is generally provided two DNS addresses. One is primary and another is secondary or alternative DNS address. What I did was that I just changed the secondary address to the primary address and vice-versa. It worked for me instantly.

I kept the alternative DNS address as primary address for two days. The problem solved itself and later, I reinstated the old DNS entry.

score 6 · Answer 12 · edited Feb 21 '14 at 02:38

6

For me private browsing did the trick (New incognito window/ private window).

edited Feb 21 '14 at 02:38

Jon

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answered Nov 08 '13 at 14:48

Bart Broekhuizen

61

score 6 · Answer 13 · answered Jan 27 '14 at 08:48

Full process:

Created site in IIS (windows 8), set host header.

Tried hitting the the host with no host file, ensuring to use http:// so it does not just do a google search. Correctly failed in chrome "Version 32.0.1700.76 m"

Add host to host file as 127.0.0.1, now can hit it in chrome.

Remove from host file and run ipconfig /flushdns, chrome still shows site!

Do nothing other than CTRL+F5 and now site correct fails in Chrome.

With the number of different answers here I wonder if we all have slightly different use cases.

score 3 · Answer 14 · edited Feb 14 '20 at 09:12

3

Try DNS Flusher for Chrome. Note that to use it, it requires a command line flag, --enable-benchmarking when you start the Chrome browser.

edited Feb 14 '20 at 09:12

Dogkiller87

103

answered Mar 31 '12 at 14:27

Sway Deng

49

David Allen · Answer 15 · 2015-03-07T01:20:16.610

For iPhone users, these techniques work just as effectively. I had to do some testing of a website, and I wanted to override the normal DNS server and use my own DNS server with DNS entries that are not yet public.

I override the DNS entry in my wifi setting on my iPhone 6 Plus to my custom DNS server. That was good enough for Safari and Perfect Browser. But Chrome seemed to ignore that and had its own set of DNS entries. I could NOT figure out where they came from.

I did what they described above

Navigate to chrome://net-internals/#dns and click "Clear Host Cache"
Navigate to chrome://net-internals/#sockets abd click "Flush Socket Pools"

AND I had to also Use an InCognito Tab as mentioned above.

Only THEN did Chrome use my custom DNS entry.

score 2 · Answer 16 · answered Sep 18 '16 at 09:49

On Mac OS X, none of the above mentioned approaches worked for me. The following approach did:

Click Chrome menu > preferences > click the link show advanced settings in the bottom of the page > click clear browsing data button in privacy section > only select cached images and files and download history (perhaps the later isn't required, but doesn't hurt either) > click clear browsing data button.

score 2 · Answer 17 · answered Dec 13 '13 at 07:29

2

Navigate to chrome://net-internals/#dns and press the "Clear host cache" button. as answered already Also you may need dscacheutil -flushcache command in OS X, to flush system-wide DNS cache. ipconfig /flushdns in windows command prompt

answered Dec 13 '13 at 07:29

Dipesh KC

125

How to clear/flush the DNS cache in Google Chrome?

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