Seemless Refresh (created with AI)

ernestdefoe

I'm going to start out by saying this has been submitted as a PR for Flarum core but in case it gets rejected or not implemented for some time I have created an extension to accomplish it.

🔄 Seamless Refresh — kill the "reload this page" nag without ever going stale

You know the one. You're halfway through a long post — reading or typing — and Flarum pops up: "A new version of this page is available. [Reload]". On a busy forum where assets rebuild often (deploys, extension toggles), that alert can feel like it's constantly nagging you.

Seamless Refresh takes a gentler approach: when newer assets are detected, it doesn't interrupt you at all — it just quietly remembers. The next time you actually navigate — click a link, open a discussion, use back/forward — the browser does a normal full page load of that destination, so the fresh assets come along for the ride.

No modal, no timing guesswork, no risk of wiping a draft. You're never interrupted, and your very next click is already on the new assets.

✨ What you get

🤫 Never interrupts a reading or typing user — nothing appears mid-session.
⚡ Always up to date — the very next navigation boots on the new assets.
🧘 Zero configuration — enable it and you're done. No settings at all.
🪶 No backend — it only changes how the frontend reacts to the X-Flarum-Assets-Revision header Flarum already sends with every API response.
🔧 How it works

Flarum core detects a new asset revision in ForumApplication.checkAssetsRevision and shows the alert. This extension overrides that method to set a flag instead, and registers a capture-phase click listener: while the flag is set, an internal same-origin link click becomes a full page load (window.location.assign), so the destination boots with the new assets. Back/forward navigation reloads too.

It deliberately does not touch:

Modified clicks (Ctrl/⌘/Shift/middle — "open in new tab")
target="_blank" and download links
In-page anchors (#…), javascript:, mailto:, and tel: links
External links
And it never fires while you're just reading or typing — only a real navigation triggers the refresh, so the browser's own "unsaved changes" guard still protects an open composer.

🙏 Credit

The behaviour is a direct implementation of the "refresh on the next natural interaction" idea luceos proposed on the Flarum tracker as a middle ground between always interrupt and never warn. If you like it, it's also being proposed for Flarum core.

📦 Installation

composer require ernestdefoe/seamless-refresh

Then enable Seamless Refresh in Admin → Extensions. That's it — no settings.

🔄 Updating

composer update ernestdefoe/seamless-refresh
php flarum cache:clear

🔗 GitHub: ernestdefoe/seamless-refresh
📦 Packagist: https://packagist.org/packages/ernestdefoe/seamless-refresh
💬 Support forum: https://ernestdefoe.online
📄 License: MIT

Questions, bugs, or edge cases I missed? Open an issue on GitHub or stop by the support forum.

luceos

Although the implementation is not entirely what I intended, using document event listeners, I am still very curious how it performs; any feedback so far?

ernestdefoe

luceos on my end I’m just using it on a couple of small forums but I had Claude run an end to end test multiple times and it seemed to perform well. Need some real life tests to truly know.

fabre4

I installed it on my forum. After activating it and clearing the cache, I went to one of my longer posts. While I was editing my forum, which would normally have triggered the reload modal, it didn't as expected by this extension. Then, it wouldn't let me reply to a post, even though I hadn't reloaded the page. I disabled and re-enabled the extension, updating it in the process, and now it’s working perfectly! Thank you so much!

ernestdefoe

fabre4 you are welcome. Sorry about your initial hiccup but glad it's working good for you now.

MrLaviana1

ernestdefoe Excellent extension! It works perfectly; I notice that my website's posts now load instantly 😮. They used to take 2 to 2.5 seconds, but now I see them loading instantly—in 0.0 seconds. Thanks for the great work! 👏

ernestdefoe

Seamless Refresh v0.2.0 — sessions that end under an open page

Leave a tab open long enough and its session expires. Until now Flarum didn't notice until you did something: your reply, like or edit failed with an error, and so did every action after it, until you reloaded by hand. Asked for in Forcing page reloads/refreshes.

Signed back in without noticing. With "remember me", the server signs the member straight back in, but the page still holds the old security token. Seamless Refresh fetches the new one and sends the failed action again. The reply posts; nothing appears.
Actually signed out? One calm notice with a Sign in button, instead of an error on every click. The page and anything typed stay put.
A real "no" (something the member isn't allowed to do) still shows Flarum's usual message.
Coming back to an old tab, including a page a phone restores from memory: it checks in once. Signed out meanwhile shows the notice. Changed groups or permissions, or a forum update, make the next click load fresh.

Nothing new runs on a timer: the check happens only after a failed action or when an old tab is looked at again.

composer update ernestdefoe/seamless-refresh
php flarum cache:clear

Release on GitHub

MrLaviana1

ernestdefoe Is it necessary with the new 2.0 update? I don't see the warning message on Flarum (here) anymore...

Karl

MrLaviana1 Ian has addressed this around rc6 or rc7 after the community mentioned that it seemed a little too frequent at the time. Ian quickly addressed a flaw in the system and has patched it for rc8.

Tutrix

MrLaviana1 I don't see the warning message on Flarum (here) anymore

but it also appears here, though less frequently 😉

MrLaviana1

Tutrix I did notice the notification today; it's true that it's not as annoying now as it used to be.