How to Find the Shortcut Key for Refresh in Windows 11

Windows 11 brought new additions, overhauls, and improvements, but the default refresh key is still F5.

In this guide, we’ll show a lot of other ways to refresh your desktop easily.

How do I refresh my computer desktop in Windows 11?

1. Refresh Windows 11 via the context menu

A quick and handy method to refresh your Windows 11 device’s screen is to use the built-in context menu. This menu can be accessed whenever you right-click on your desktop.

From the context menu, depending on your Windows build, you will find the refresh option in two different places, as we will show you.

1. Navigate to your Desktop.

2. Right-click on any empty space on the Desktop to open the context menu.

3. If you are using the Windows build 22000.65 o or a newer one, you can find the Refresh button right here in the options. All you need to do is select it.

4. In case you’re using an older build, you need to click on Show more options (or press Shift + F10).

5. You should now see the Refresh option and can click on it.

As you can see, for previous builds, the Refresh option wasn’t removed; it was just hidden under another set of options, which you can toggle by following the steps above.

Interestingly, some users stated that the feature was still in the right spot for them, so perhaps it depended on the Windows 11 version you were using.

If the Windows 11 desktop is not refreshing automatically, this guide will help you fix the problem.

Did you know that you can make Windows 11 look like Windows 10 again? Check out our quick guide that will show you how to do it.

NOTE

Not all the changes are final! We aren’t at the operating system’s final release, so everything is subject to change. Voice your opinion on the MS forums, as Microsoft needs all the feedback it can get to make Windows 11 the perfect system.

2. Use your keyboard

1. Press the F5 key on your keyboard to refresh your desktop.
2. Some keyboards or laptops require you to use Fn + F5 shortcut.
3. After that, your screen will refresh.

Where is the refresh button located?

As we have mentioned right in the opening of this article, on most keyboards, the refresh button is the F5 key. For more information on how to activate it, check our previous section.

If you encounter any problems with the newly released operating system, we encourage you to do a factory reset. Here’s a great guide dedicated to resetting Windows 11 to factory settings.

That’s about it for this article. We have plenty of ways to refresh the desktop like you used to do in the previous Windows versions. Keep in mind that issues can sometimes occur, such as desktop that keeps refreshing.

If you have any other information we didn’t manage to include, please share it with us in the comment section below.