Refresh Behavior on User Interaction: Stop, Pause, or Restart Auto Refresh When You Click or Type

If a page keeps reloading while you are reading it, clicking a link, or typing into a field, that is auto refresh doing exactly what you told it to — on a fixed timer. The problem is that the timer does not know you are busy. The new Refresh Behavior on User Interaction option in Auto Refresh fixes that by watching for your activity and deciding what the countdown should do the moment you touch the page.

Open the extension, go to the Advance Options section, tick Refresh Behavior on User Interaction, and then choose one of three modes — Stop, Pause, or Restart — for what happens when you click on the page or type in a focused field.

Auto Refresh

English 

Running 

Time Interval

Refresh List

Detect Keyword

Advance Options

 Show visual timer on the webpage

 Refresh Behavior on User Interaction 

Stop Pause Restart

 Hard Refresh

 Start auto refresh on browser start

Save

How to set the refresh behavior when you interact with a page

1. Open the Auto Refresh extension and enter or select the URL you want to keep refreshing.
2. Scroll down to the Advance Options section.
3. Tick Refresh Behavior on User Interaction. A small Stop / Pause / Restart switch appears right below it.
4. Pick the mode you want:
   • Stop — auto refresh stops completely the moment you click on the page or type in a focused field. Use this when you want to read or fill something in without any interruption.
   • Pause — the countdown pauses on the current tab while you are active and resumes afterwards. If the page reloads, the timer resets to the beginning.
   • Restart — every interaction restarts the countdown from the full interval, so the page only reloads once you have been idle for the whole timer again.
5. Click Save. The behavior applies to that URL right away — no browser restart needed.

Which mode should you choose?

• Filling out a form or writing a comment? Choose Stop so a reload never wipes out what you were typing.
• Watching a live dashboard but need to click around occasionally? Choose Pause — the refresh waits while you work and picks up again when you step away.
• Monitoring a page where "activity" should reset the clock? Choose Restart so the interval always starts fresh after your last action.
• The trigger is any real interaction — a mouse click on the page, or typing while a field is focused. Simply moving the mouse does not count.
• This is a per-URL setting, so you can use Stop on one page and Pause on another at the same time.

Why a fixed timer gets in the way

A normal refresh interval is deliberately dumb: it counts down and reloads, regardless of what you are doing. That is perfect when you are not touching the page — a scoreboard, a queue position, a shipment tracker. It becomes a problem the instant you do touch it. You start reading a long comment, the timer hits zero, and the page jumps back to the top. You paste text into a search box, and the reload throws it away. You click into a live table to inspect a row, and it reloads out from under you. None of that is a bug; the timer simply has no idea you are busy. Refresh Behavior on User Interaction gives the timer that awareness, so it can back off exactly when you need it to and carry on the rest of the time.

A practical example

Say you are watching an internal admin dashboard that you keep on a 15‑second refresh so the figures stay current. Every so often you need to open a record and type a quick note. With the behavior set to Pause, the countdown quietly stops the moment you click into the note field and starts again once you are done — the numbers keep updating, but never while you are mid‑sentence. If instead you were filling in a longer form that must not be interrupted at all, Stop would be the safer pick: the refresh halts on your first click and stays off until you re‑enable it. And on a page where any activity should reset the clock — say you only want a reload after a full period of no input — Restart keeps pushing the next refresh back with every click or keypress.

Refresh Behavior on User Interaction turns auto refresh from a blunt timer into something that respects what you are actually doing on the page. Set it once per URL, pick Stop, Pause, or Restart, and you will never again lose a half-typed form or get yanked away mid-click by a reload you forgot was running.