Development server of create-react-app does not auto refresh

Have you seen the “Troubleshooting” section of the User Guide?
It describes a few common causes of this problem:

When you save a file while npm start is running, the browser should refresh with the updated code.

If this doesn’t happen, try one of the following workarounds:

  • If your project is in a Dropbox folder, try moving it out.
  • If the watcher doesn’t see a file called index.js and you’re referencing it by the folder name, you need to restart the watcher due to a Webpack bug.
  • Some editors like Vim and IntelliJ have a “safe write” feature that currently breaks the watcher. You will need to disable it. Follow the instructions in “Disabling swap files creation in vim”.
  • If your project path contains parentheses, try moving the project to a path without them. This is caused by a Webpack watcher bug.
  • On Linux and macOS, you might need to tweak system settings to allow more watchers.
  • If the project runs inside a virtual machine such as (a Vagrant provisioned) VirtualBox, create an .env file in your project directory if it doesn’t exist, and add CHOKIDAR_USEPOLLING=true to it. This ensures that the next time you run npm start, the watcher uses the polling mode, as necessary inside a VM.

If none of these solutions help please leave a comment in this thread.

I hope this helps!


Have you tried npm start with super user permissions? I had the issue with my project and I solved it like this.

$sudo bash
#npm  start

If none of the above alternatives works, try adding a .env file in the base path of the project and inside add FAST_REFRESH = false

  • React 17
  • React-scrits 4