The answer reveals a fundamental philosophical difference between Microsoft and Apple about how a computer should think. Windows treats the user like a co-pilot. When you hit F5, you are manually telling the OS, "Stop what you’re doing. Look at the hard drive again. Is there new data? Show it to me now."
Apple, for better or worse, treats the user like a passenger. Steve Jobs famously believed that if a computer needed a "refresh" button, the computer was broken. In Apple’s ideal world, the operating system is constantly watching the file system. When you save a document in the background, the Finder window should know instantly. When a webpage loads a new image, Safari should just paint it. refresh key on macbook
This is the closest you will get to the muscle memory of F5. In Safari, Chrome, or Firefox, it reloads the page. In the Finder, it refreshes the file list. Look at the hard drive again
The answer reveals a fundamental philosophical difference between Microsoft and Apple about how a computer should think. Windows treats the user like a co-pilot. When you hit F5, you are manually telling the OS, "Stop what you’re doing. Look at the hard drive again. Is there new data? Show it to me now."
Apple, for better or worse, treats the user like a passenger. Steve Jobs famously believed that if a computer needed a "refresh" button, the computer was broken. In Apple’s ideal world, the operating system is constantly watching the file system. When you save a document in the background, the Finder window should know instantly. When a webpage loads a new image, Safari should just paint it.
This is the closest you will get to the muscle memory of F5. In Safari, Chrome, or Firefox, it reloads the page. In the Finder, it refreshes the file list.