<zhead>
Meta tags

refresh

Reloads the current page after a delay or performs a timed redirect. Automatic navigation can confuse users, so a server redirect is usually a better choice.

Parameters

seconds
A non-negative integer giving the delay before reload or redirect.
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="seconds">
URL
An optional destination written after a semicolon, whitespace, and URL=.
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="URL">
export type Refresh =
     /**
   * A non-negative integer giving the delay before reload or redirect.
  **/
    'seconds'
    /**
   * An optional destination written after a semicolon, whitespace, and URL=.
  **/
    'URL'

Code examples

Good example
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5; URL=https://example.com/next">
Valid timed redirect syntax. Prefer an HTTP redirect unless the visible delay serves a real purpose.
Avoid this example
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=https://example.com/next">
Missing whitespace after the semicolon, so this does not match the current HTML syntax.
Good example
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="300">
Reloads a dedicated status page after five minutes. Live updates are usually less disruptive.
Avoid this example
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="3">
Frequent full-page reloads can interrupt reading, keyboard focus, and assistive technology.

Recommendations

  • 01
    Prefer an HTTP Redirect
    Use a 301 or 308 response for a permanent move, or 302 or 307 for a temporary one. It works before the page loads and is clearer to browsers and crawlers.
  • 02
    Warn Before Automatic Navigation
    If a timed refresh is unavoidable, give people enough time to read and interact, show the countdown, and provide a link to continue manually.

Related documentation

Related meta tags

Content-Security-Policy

http-equiv

Enforces a Content Security Policy from the document head. A policy limits where scripts, styles, images, connections, and other resources can come from, which reduces the impact of content injection bugs.

<meta http-equiv="Content-Security-Policy" content="default-src 'self'; object-src 'none'; base-uri 'self';">
Uses the same origin by default, blocks plugin content, and limits base URLs to the same origin.

content-type

http-equiv

Provides the legacy pragma form of an HTML character encoding declaration. For conforming HTML, its content must be text/html; charset=utf-8.

<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
The only conforming content value for this pragma in an HTML document.

default-style

http-equiv

Selects the preferred CSS style sheet set by name when a page offers alternate titled stylesheets. Browser support is limited.

<meta http-equiv="default-style" content="Main Style">
Valid when a linked stylesheet set has the exact title Main Style.

refresh

http-equiv

Reloads the current page after a delay or performs a timed redirect. Automatic navigation can confuse users, so a server redirect is usually a better choice.

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5; URL=https://example.com/next">
Valid timed redirect syntax. Prefer an HTTP redirect unless the visible delay serves a real purpose.

X-UA-Compatible

http-equiv

A legacy Internet Explorer pragma whose only conforming value is IE=edge. Current user agents must ignore it, so new pages should omit it.

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
The only value allowed by the HTML standard, kept here for reading legacy markup. Current browsers ignore it.