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When you press Back or Forward, the browser does not always reload the page. Many browsers keep a finished page in memory when you leave it, along with its JavaScript state, and can show that same page again when you return. The open menu, the half-filled form, and the scroll position you left behind can all reappear without a new network request or a fresh page load. The feature responsible is the back/forward cache, usually called bfcache.
Why an old interface state comes back
A normal page load builds the page from scratch: the browser fetches or reuses the HTML, parses it, builds the DOM, and runs the scripts. Bfcache skips that rebuild. When you navigate away, the browser may hold the entire page in memory, including its DOM and its JavaScript heap, and then reactivate that same page when you return.
MDN’s bfcache entry describes the stored snapshot as containing “the entire page in memory, including the JavaScript heap; in-progress code is paused when the user navigates away and resumed when they return to the page.” Chromium’s bfcache overview makes the same point more briefly: the browser “might just pause that page, keeping everything fully intact.” That is why a stale-looking interface can be the correct result of the browser doing its job. The application never ran its startup code again, so nothing reset the state it had when you left.
How bfcache differs from ordinary HTTP caching
People often lump these together because both avoid downloads, but they reuse different things. An HTTP cache stores server responses and can answer a request without contacting the server. Bfcache stores a live page. The table below compares the three paths.
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| Aspect | Normal page load | HTTP cache hit | Bfcache restore |
|---|---|---|---|
| What is reused | Nothing from the page itself | Stored server responses | The in-memory page, including DOM and JavaScript heap |
| Page built again | Yes | Yes, from cached responses | No |
| Scripts run from start | Yes | Yes | No; paused code resumes |
| JavaScript state | Reset to initial values | Reset to initial values | Preserved as it was when the user left |
| Full page load event | Fires as usual | Fires as usual | Not repeated; pageshow fires with event.persisted set to true |
The practical consequence is that an HTTP cache can make a reload faster while still producing a clean state, whereas bfcache can return a state you had already changed.
Not every Back or Forward action uses bfcache
A restore is an optimization, not a guarantee. Browsers apply their own eligibility rules, and those rules differ between browsers and versions. A page that is eligible at one moment may be evicted later, for example to free memory or after a time limit. When that happens the browser falls back to a normal load, and your startup code runs again. Your application therefore has to handle both outcomes.
Common reasons a page may not be restored include:
- An
unloadevent listener on the page, which Chrome DevTools reports as an actionable issue. - Cache-control headers, such as
Cache-Control: no-store, that mark the response as not storable. - Eviction, because the browser has limited memory or has kept the page for too long.
- Browser-specific restrictions that vary by engine and version.
Test restoration in the browsers your users actually use. Do not assume that every Back or Forward action restores the page.
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How to detect a restore in your code
The web.dev guide on back/forward cache documents an event-based check. The pageshow event fires after load on the first visit, and again whenever a page is restored from bfcache. The persisted property tells you which case you are in.
- Add a listener for
pageshowonwindowin your page’s startup code, before any code that depends on the restore state. - Inside the listener, check
event.persisted. A value oftruemeans the page was restored from bfcache. - When
persistedistrue, refresh whatever state could have changed while the user was away, as described in the freshness section below.
window.addEventListener('pageshow', (event) => {
if (event.persisted) {
// Page came back from bfcache: re-check time-sensitive state here.
}
});If you need a cleanup hook when the user leaves, use pagehide instead of unload. The web.dev guidance recommends this because unload blocks eligibility.
Finding out why a page was not restored
When you expect a restore and do not see one, work through the browser’s diagnostics in this order.
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Chrome DevTools
In Chrome, open DevTools, go to the Application panel, and select Background services → Back/forward cache. Run the test there. The panel reports whether the page is eligible and lists the reasons it is not, along with the frames involved when a blocker sits inside an iframe.
notRestoredReasons in code
Where supported, PerformanceNavigationTiming.notRestoredReasons exposes the reasons restoration was blocked. MDN marks this API as experimental with limited availability, so use it as a supplementary signal in instrumentation, not as a cross-browser diagnostic you can rely on everywhere.
Common blocker checklist
- Replace
unloadlisteners withpagehide. - Check the response headers of the page and of any frames it embeds for
Cache-Control: no-store. - Confirm that the page does not hold open connections or resources that the browser treats as ineligible; DevTools names the specific blocker when it can.
- Retest after each change, because a single blocker can hide others.
Refreshing state that may have changed
A restored page shows what was true when the user left, not what is true now. For a checkout, an authenticated account page, a cart, or a live status value, that difference can matter. When event.persisted is true, decide what needs re-checking. A cart total or stock count might need a request to the server. An account page might need to confirm that the session is still valid. A small read-only widget may need nothing at all.
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Do not use Cache-Control: no-store across the whole site to prevent restores. It removes the speed benefit of bfcache for every page, and the freshness problem can usually be solved in the page’s own code. Reserve it for responses that genuinely contain sensitive data and should never be stored.
Keep in mind that a restored page may also carry sensitive content from the previous session, such as a visible account name or a filled-in address. On shared computers, consider whether that content should be cleared or re-authenticated when the page is restored.
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Measuring restored visits
Analytics tools that count pageviews from the initial load event may miss a restored page, because no new initial load happens. The web.dev guide suggests recording the pageshow event when persisted is true, and keeping restore navigations separate from ordinary page loads when you analyze performance.
The scale of back and forward navigation is worth knowing when you decide how much this matters. The web.dev guide, in its 2026 update, cites Chrome usage data showing that about 1 in 10 desktop navigations and 1 in 5 mobile navigations are back or forward navigations. That figure measures navigation share. It does not tell you what fraction of those navigations were served from bfcache, and it should not be read as a restore rate.
Some monitoring SDKs can report bfcache metrics directly. Sentry, for example, describes an opt-in bfcache metrics integration in its JavaScript SDK v11, so check your SDK version and its settings before relying on that data.
A note on NinoGames specifically
No public NinoGames documentation describes its browser setup, framework, or game engine, so the behavior and examples above describe browsers in general. Whether NinoGames pages are restored from bfcache depends on the browser a visitor uses and on how each page is built. Testing with the Chrome DevTools path above is the most direct way to confirm what happens on a specific page.
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The reader question behind this topic is often a symptom rather than a request for theory. One example is a user asking how to make window.history.back() ignore a previous navigation menu state. In that case, the menu is typically restored from bfcache with its open state intact, so the fix is to reset the menu in the pageshow handler when event.persisted is true, not to change the back navigation itself.
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