Well, I sure didn't expect to have a small existential crisis at the end of a video about a niche OS feature

The line " We are here , might as well do something " is soo true 😅

That was a refreshing ending, 10/10

*5 Second Explanation:* It refreshes your desktop icons. Why did they make the video 7 minutes long? Did I miss something?

Sometimes I watch something that I think gives me a glimpse into an alternate reality. This is one of those.

The reason why I do refresh/f5 on old machine is to make sure the computer is ready to run If you refresh and your desktop doesn't immediately flash the icons, you know it's not ready to be used , so you refresh again and again , until it's immediate. Only then you know it's ready and it's not gonna be laggy when you use it

5:43 fun fact. It used to make the character’s actions more effective on PlayStation 1, 2 and 3 because the buttons were pressure sensitive so devs could take advantage of that if they wanted to

Ok back in the day, your desktop icons wouldn’t “save” when you rearranged them. You had to spam refresh to get your changes to save.

I would have never come to the idea that someone might think refresh makes it faster. I always thought it was a thing to not be so bored.

I never used that button in 20 years

I dont expect that ending ... but I glad that is meaningful in someway

This feature is actually really useful for network mounts. If you make a change on a network share, it doesn't get automatically updated by Windows. This is mostly an enterprise thing though, but some hobbiests probably have similar setups.

It's crazy that some people in the comments are saying they don't do that. I thought EVERYONE did that

Ive seen people do this and i thought it was something to do with older hard disk drive PCs, By pressing the refresh button, you create a task making the hard disk power back up if it has gone into sleep mode. Still seems kinda pointless when you can turn off hard drive power off. For some reason it sort of infuriates me when I see people refreshing continuously as a "techy" person but this video helped me to understand that its more of a habit than the people actually thinking it does anything positive for their system.

I use it daily bz windows is too slow to realise that the downloaded stuff is no longer downloading and the whole file is there.

I only use it in the download folder when the downloaded file doesn't show up

File Explorer doesn't always update the desktop with what's been deleted or not, even when using Windows 7. So since then I've refreshed the desktop with F5 just to make sure everything is in it's place. I have never thought that it was going to make the system "faster". To counter the points in the video, analog face buttons exist for some PS2/PS3 games, so pushing buttons harder or softer is required. Another is motion control, tilting the controller thinking you're driving better can be useful when the controller has a Gyroscope. Like the Steam Controller, which I use the tilt bindings for driving games, lol (works surprisingly well). Push buttons around the house in cheap appliances can wear out over time, requiring multiple presses (worn out contact). So it's not just a syndrome but an actual solution in case a button is actually not responding to input.

Very rarely I will have an icon not show up on my desktop that I know should be there. That's the only time I use this feature.

This video is so artfully done, I would like to refresh and watch it again sometime soon.

I only use the refresh button to get rid of the dotted lines around a desktop icon when they won't go away on their own.

You usually need to refresh when a download changes from a download file to the file you wanted if thr GUI is already open

literally never spammed refresh on my desktop

I used to watch this channel in 2016-17 then it suddenly dropped from my feed. I mostly forgot about this channel while still being subscribed. Today this video showed on top of my feed and your voice brought back so many memories. Anyways thanks for the content in a way your videos pushed me to study computer science and I will be getting my masters in computer science in the next few months. Thanks :)

I got so focused as this video went from being technical to philosophical. Beautiful interpretation and really unexpected. Much interesting.

Is this a made up problem?

i've seen one of my relatives do this and i never truly understood why aside from thinking it was something related to older windows versions, which also escalates to the said relative telling me not to use a desktop background nor more than 1 monitor as it causes performance problems - i believe them but i honestly don't think it's that much of an issue. the only thing i seem to do is pressing harder on my keyboard in racing games, thinking i'll steer tighter

As I mainly use Linux alongside Windows dual boot for gaming, I pretty much never use that button. I know it just refreshes the icons in the desktop and folders and does nothing else. It used to be useful in Windows XP when PCs were much slower than now, but it's pretty much obsolete in my opinion.

it is an antistress button

I didn't even know that there was a refresh button when you right click on your desktop and I've used computers for 30+ years.

In 30 years I've never used that button. Didn't even know it existed.

The main idea of the video and the outro were 2 completely seperate videos

i almost died at "in order to render it's gooey"... 💀

The Ending of this video was gold ✨️ Totally worth the watch

When I had a low-end PC, I did it to "wake up the system". Basically put some pressure onto it, so it activates all of the processes faster.

We press refresh to gauge the responsiveness of the system. Like when you doubt internet connection and refresh the page to test it.

going from tech to philosophy to motivation and anything in between is very rare in one video

I wasn't prepared for that ending

Right after this video, I minimized the window, went to desktop to refresh couple of times. So satisfying.

The crosswalk button syndrome is like me closing and opening a video over and over again to skip the ad for free

Okay, that ended up more philosophical than expected. The actual purpose is this: The graphical shell (explorer.exe) "subscribes" to the currently open folders (including the desktop) to be notified when files are created, changed, renamed or removed in the file system, to know when to update its display of the icons. This subscription (a "file system watcher") has always had bugs and corner cases and doesn't always trigger when files change - one example being a browser that renames a temporary file once a download completes, another being files getting renamed from the command prompt. So when you, as the user, know (or suspect) that files have changed but the shell hasn't caught it yet, you ask it to refresh explicitly so you can work with the new files in the graphical view. For the desktop, it very rarely makes sense. It never occurred to me that people would click this believing it did anything more than that, or for stress relief. Users are weeeeird...

In my humble beginnings with computers in 2008, I constantly refreshed the desktop. It slowly died off and I no longer do it. My dad however still does it and tells me to refresh it when I'm doing something on his computer.

I didn't even knew such a button existed

One thing that confuses me to this day is, why do people use the desktop? I personally haven't ever used the desktop in years. I just always have my browser in the background of all my other programs, and I find that the start menu, search, and the taskbar are much much faster than searching through a grid of tiles. In fact, I've found that putting stuff in the documents folder is much better than on the desktop.

I only use the refresh option on occasion when I'm moving a lot of icons or files around and I can't find something afterwards. Works exactly as intended then. Interesting to learn that some people refresh compulsively though.

Man that is a nice way to make this kind of video Starting with a story Ending with a message And existential crisis in between

I never thought it made anything faster. Pushing the traffic light button does actually kind of work. After all, if you push the button a second time, the time interval between your last press and the light turning green is reduced. If you keep pressing, eventually one press will be your closest press before the light turns green. I do use F5 or the refresh button or click the current folder in the address bar to reload the view often, but not for no reason. If you are for example in "This PC" and you look at the drive space used on each partition, the bars don't update automatically. If you are installing something it will for example keep saying "1GB free", but after hitting F5 it actually suddenly says 500MB free, and again and it says 100MB free. On MacOS there is no refresh button, but the disk space is constantly updated and can be watched live in activity monitor or the info panel of the partition. On Windows I have also often needed refresh since sometimes there is a bug or something that causes Explorer to fail to refresh at all. Creating a folder doesn't make it show. If you refresh with F5, your folder is immediately named "New folder", if you click the current folder in the address bar, the folder name is still highlighted so you can type in it. This indicates that there are also multiple types of refreshes in Windows, the F5 does a full refresh of the contents, while clicking the current directory in the address bar in Explorer appears to do the same refresh it should do automatically. Refreshing in Windows is useful and often necessary for certain tasks although a regular user probably doesn't do anything where refreshing is necessary. MacOS doesn't really have a refresh option, everything just works automatically.

It does also help if a folder is say, updated in a share, and windows hasn't seen it yet.

In 30 years of using Windows, I can't recall a specific need to refresh the frame buffer. Maybe that was the case with Windows 3.x on DOS, but then, a corrupted screen was a good sign that it was time to reboot.

my nerd brain didn’t expect to be dumbfounded by a cinematic masterpiece

I literally use it once in a blue moon. Last year I was on my friend’s computer. I saved a file from Chrome onto the desktop and it didn’t show up. Refresh make it appear. Thanks, refresh!

I used it a few times when the gui wasn't updated but the most i use it is when that right click menu is displayed over other windows and it doesn't go away by clicking somewhere.

I learn this from school everytime we go to the computer lab. The teacher always ask the student to hit refresh 3 times after turning the computer on.

Refresh will prompt Explorer to update its settings like icon sizes and positions and write it to the registry, so I always use it after moving icons on the desktop so if Explorer crashes, it restores them on restart. Also, every time a weird glitch I keep getting breaks a bunch of different things in Windows, stops updating things on its own, so filenames can get corrupted and objects can be invalid (eg moved but still visible in their original location or not showing up after being moved).

the ending was so impactful

i didn't even know it existed

Why is this informational video so calming.....

Legend says that the third time you Refresh, your CMOS battery is being cleared, and the fourth time, it's your browser history..

I always assumed it closes and reopens the program, that's it so it starts processing from the beginning and cleaning memory

Your philosophy in the last sentence won my heart.

Came for technical knowledge, left with wisdom

I still get the situations where new files wont show up in folders with a lot of files until I refresh them

Tutorial KZfaqrs in 2011 used to use this button every 5 seconds

i knew many people who thinks refresh speeds up computers, i did believe that too but after knowing what it actually does, i got rid of that habit quickly, now i never refresh icons mindlessly

I got that compulsion as a kid because a cousin of mine had told me that it made the PC faster after booting. I get how someone could have come to that conclusion though, because it did create an illusion of that, but it was really just a confirmation bias. The habit got so ingrained in me that sometimes I still do it even though I know there isn't much of a point.

I didn't even know that compulsively clicking on the refresh button was a thing

The unemployed friend at Tuesday 😂

Sometimes when I empty my trash bin and always when I delete all of the contents of a folder but leave the folder on the desktop, the icon does not change. I have to hit refresh _twice_ before it will change.

I never did that. Never saw a reason to do that on my pc.

On older OS-es (XP) that button actually did something as a side effect. CPU cache(es) exists, and HDDs too. Old PCs would stop the HDD in idle because why not if its in idle. By pressing the refresh button a LOT of things happen at once. Like file access which already caches some things into RAM and Cache in case it was dropped and also it ramps up the HDD minimizing latency between your new few actions. I would say it unintentionally makes everything a bit snappier for a little bit.

That is the best video i see in the last 5 year 😅 You are the best ❤

Back in XP days there was popular myth that clicking refresh makes pc run better and faster So we all spammed refresh button before starting any program

tbh your video is so good and well scripted with best hooks. But it's also amazing that you went from refresh button to real life syndromes.

You’ve just given me a new tick, thanks 😃

I know what this button does. The Refresh button serves to display changes in a place where they were not immediately displayed after the changes themselves For example: you copy paste a file into some direction. If it doesn't display or show up, you press F5 key/Refresh button. Then you can see it

So on windows 10 while downloading an archive with chrome, while also unpacking another archive using the right click context menu using WinRAR, it quite often doesn't delete the part file of the download when the download is complete. If the archive finishes unpacking within a short period of time as the download completing, it doesn't always render the new files. It's a very specific and unique situation. But it's a pretty solid example that refresh fixes. Now my compulsion is to refresh 3 times, but that's more because smacking f5 in old Firefox used to do a full refresh ignoring cached data, and I picked up that habit back in college.

This video might not refresh my computer, but it certainly refreshed my mind 👍

Your intro is Fantastic... 😍😍😍 I really liked it... 😊

That ending was not expected.

I like how the video went from technological factor to an entire philosophical chaos

Back in the Windows 7 days, doing a refresh seemed to give file transfers a speed boost.

3:16 So that's why in Windows XP you had sometimes an icon with a white square/weird color or even (happened) the icons gets duplicated to other shortcuts around it!

I forgot to do refresh since 2021 when i built my new pc. Now after a few sec of clicking on this video, i clicked refresh for the first time in my machine.

I dont think I've ever even paid attention to that button, or even known it existed until I saw the thumbnail of this video.

For me its some kind of question to windows: "Are You ready? Are you listening?" Because if you do a right-click and it takes very long to show the refresh button in the context menu, I know the system is not reactive because it is on heavy load.

5:33 The PS2 had controller face buttons that where pressure sensitive but not a lot of games utilized this feature, racing games primarily used this function.

5:36 the dualshock 2 actually had pressure sensitive buttons which change the action based on whether we pressed them softly or hard

5:34 Fun fact: Controllers actually have pressure sensor in main buttons. Few games used it, but they were there. An example is Metal Gear Solid 3. The AK-47 would only fire if you pressed Square button HARD.

Fascinating video

But that's not enough reason to click on a refresh button right after booting your pc. Your browser also has a refresh button. Do you refresh every site as soon as you open it? The only time I use a folder refresh button is when I changed files on a different device (network folders) or in a different window. In these cases I know the files should have changed but the file Explorer doesn't update the file list (dolphin is really extreme with this). For websites it's the same I use the refresh button if something went wrong or I expect changes to the content that happened externally.

Ending lines hit hard!

The only reason people say they didn't use it because they didn't grow up using a slow system which freezes up at times, in that scenario it's very useful to know if the computer is unresponsive/slow or normal.

Glad to know I'm not the only one that has been spamming Refresh for the last decades.

I think I do this to ensure my PC is at its full potential by judging the time it takes to press the mouse button and the actual refreshing of the icons happening. Its longer when you have just booted up

for me (back when i was new to win XP) , its just a way to check if the pc is still running task in the background. when i refresh and it lags or show loading icon it means it still doing its thing and i wont bother it for a while. and then later on it became a habit to right click and refresh(or hold F5) on desktop every boot before doing anything on pc. lol

i know it's simplification, but don't you think the ui/fps analogy is a bit too off? imagine you are moving icons' positions around on the desktop: the visuals are updated then, but that's not what refresh does. refresh synchronizes the state of the directory your operating is aware of (that's the "cache") with the underlying file system. this is in particular important if your view shows a remote location, which, when changed by other users for example, doesn't push the updates to your os.

The users who used Windows XP or older as their main OS most probably (didn't say 100%, so don't come down in replies if you haven't) has this habit of Refresh while they were youngins. It was a belief that somehow it would improve performance as you're refreshing the OS and starting as a clean slate.

honestly i think of it as a manual way to worm up the refreshing rate before doing anything, also sometimes when the device is stressed it takes the fps down so it's a way to redirect the resources back to the refreshing rate or at least that's what i think of as a reasoning, it could really be just me justifying a weird habit

I wasn't alive back when Windows 95 was released, but apparently the Desktop UI never refreshed itself when a new file was created. You really _had to_ manually hit refresh in order for new files to appear. I vividly remember in the Windows XP days that people had this habit of hitting refresh over and over again... I asked them why they would do it, they said they had no idea. 🤷

The only time I've ever refreshed my desktop is when I've changed the Registry value controlling whether the Windows version number is painted on the desktop. That allows me to see the change without logging out or rebooting.

I mean something good really came out of spamming that button, it led to the creation of this video