Supabase Storage: Preventing Cached Images When Updating Files + Replace storage file issue

[joaosander]

I built a profile picture CRUD system and ran into a caching issue with Supabase Storage.

When uploading an image, you need to define a path in the storage bucket. The problem is: if you reuse the same path every time, the new image will be uploaded successfully, but due to caching, the old image will still be displayed. The browser continues to serve the cached version, and only after clearing the cache does the new image appear.

To solve this, every time I update the image, I first delete the existing file and then upload the new one. However, this only works reliably if I also change the file path each time. To ensure a unique path, I append a timestamp using new Date().getTime().

Using Supabase’s “replace storage file” workflow doesn’t solve this issue, since the file path remains the same and the cache continues to serve the old image.

[Broberto]

Easiest way is to use unique names. Or to set cache to a very low number, but then you lose the cache itself.

[Yaj]

I can’t remember if there’s anymore to what I done but I’ve just done a normal upload with the correct path and file so it’ll overwrite then I retrieve the URL and i store it in a variable with a ?v= concatenated on. I can’t remember the specifics or if this is all you need but I mananged to get around your issue and I think it’s just doing this below. You use this value to get the image.

Just realised I think i also set the upload cache to be 0