How to Activate Auto Refresh on a Tab

After installing the Auto Refresh extension, nothing reloads on its own — you have to point it at a tab and tell it how often to refresh. The good news is that the entire setup lives in one panel and takes three pieces of information: which URL to refresh, how often, and a Save click to confirm.

This guide walks through that flow on the Time Interval tab, then points out the optional Advance Options you can layer on top once the basic refresh is running.

Auto Refresh

English 

Running 

Time Interval

Refresh List

Detect Keyword

Your current auto refresh time:

5 Second

URL 

https://auto-refresh.extfy.com/

Presets 

5 Second

10 Second

15 Second

5 Minute

10 Minute

15 Minute

Add custom time 

+ Custom Time

Save

How to activate Auto Refresh on a tab

1. Open the tab you want to refresh automatically.
2. Click the Auto Refresh icon in the browser toolbar to open the popup.
3. The current tab's URL is detected automatically. To target a different page, type or paste the URL into the URL field.
4. Choose how often you want the page to refresh:
   • Presets — one click on 5 Second, 10 Second, 15 Second, 5 Minute, 10 Minute, or 15 Minute.
   • Add Custom Time — set any value from a few seconds up to hours.
   • Random Interval — let the extension pick a fresh random interval between each refresh.
5. Click the Save button at the bottom of the popup.
6. Confirm the status badge at the top reads Running (toggle it if not).

That is all that is required for Auto Refresh to start. The selected tab will reload at your chosen interval until you stop it from the popup.

Pick the right interval

• Short intervals (5–15 seconds) work well for monitoring queue pages, dashboards, stock pages and anything where you need fresh data quickly.
• Long intervals (minutes or hours) are better for slow-changing content — keeping a session alive, watching a long-running build, or refreshing a status page in the background.
• Random intervals add variability between refreshes, useful when a strict fixed cadence is undesirable.
• If a 5-second interval feels closer to 15, see the dedicated guide on "Start counter immediately as soon as URL start loading" — that single Advance Option fixes the most common cause of the delay.

Optional — Advance Options

Once the basic refresh is running, the same popup hosts a richer set of controls you can layer on top:

• Hard Refresh — reload the page bypassing the browser cache.
• Stop refreshing if click anywhere on the page — pause the timer the moment you interact with the page, so you don't lose work mid-task.
• Show visual timer on the webpage — display the countdown directly on the refreshing tab.
• Stop after N number of auto refresh — cap the cycle at a specific number of reloads.
• Refresh only on current tab — keep the timer tied to the active tab instead of every tab with a matching URL.
• Detect Keyword tool — stop, alert, or click when a specific word appears on the refreshed page.

If the tab does not refresh

• Status not Running — the toggle at the top of the popup must be on. If it shows a paused state, click it once.
• URL did not save — re-open the popup and confirm the URL field still shows the address you entered. If it reverted, click Save again.
• The browser is throttling the tab — background tabs may run timers slower than foreground tabs. Keep the tab visible if precise short intervals matter.
• The page itself is slow — the countdown starts after the page finishes loading by default. If loading takes longer than the interval, the next refresh appears delayed.

Once Auto Refresh is running on the tab, you can manage it from the Refresh List tab — every saved URL appears there with its own interval, edit, delete and play controls.