--- title: "refresh · Meta Tag · zhead" canonical_url: "https://zhead.dev/meta/refresh" last_updated: "2026-08-10T16:29:03.340Z" meta: description: "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." "og:description": "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." "og:title": "refresh · Meta Tag · 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. ``` ``` URL An optional destination written after a semicolon, whitespace, and URL=. ``` ``` ## Code examples Good example ``` ``` Valid timed redirect syntax. Prefer an HTTP redirect unless the visible delay serves a real purpose. Avoid this example ``` ``` Missing whitespace after the semicolon, so this does not match the current HTML syntax. Good example ``` ``` Reloads a dedicated status page after five minutes. Live updates are usually less disruptive. Avoid this example ``` ``` 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 - [HTML Living Standard: Semantics](https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/semantics.html#attr-meta-http-equiv-refresh) - [Google Search Central: 301 Redirects](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/301-redirects) ## Related meta tags ### [Content-Security-Policy](https://zhead.dev/meta/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. ``` ``` Uses the same origin by default, blocks plugin content, and limits base URLs to the same origin. ### [content-type](https://zhead.dev/meta/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. ``` ``` The only conforming content value for this pragma in an HTML document. ### [default-style](https://zhead.dev/meta/default-style) http-equiv Selects the preferred CSS style sheet set by name when a page offers alternate titled stylesheets. Browser support is limited. ``` ``` Valid when a linked stylesheet set has the exact title Main Style. ### [refresh](https://zhead.dev/meta/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. ``` ``` Valid timed redirect syntax. Prefer an HTTP redirect unless the visible delay serves a real purpose. ### [X-UA-Compatible](https://zhead.dev/meta/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. ``` ``` The only value allowed by the HTML standard, kept here for reading legacy markup. Current browsers ignore it.