Right-Click + Refresh (Stop Being an Idiot.)

There is no situation in which right-click + refresh will ever speed up your computer. Despite this I've seen countless people doing this on many different computers and I've even found forum threads where people discuss the benefits of right-click refresh and other people who try to explain it doesn't do anything. The morons who do this often justify it by saying "I know it doesn't do anything but it's become a habit" followed, often, by an "lol".

I don't know how this habit got started but I can't possibly imagine a time when computers would ever be speed up by this nonsense. I've been using computers for 7-8 years. My parents bought me a Dual Core Latest PC for my study when I was 15 years old. Ever since then I've been tinkering and gaming. I've learned enough through my progression through every Microsoft operating system to know without even doing the research that right-click refresh does nothing to speed up the computer. In fact, if anything it's slowing the computer down by adding more processing for the machine to do. If you're copying a file or burning a DVD or formatting a flash drive and you rightclick refresh you only stand to make the computer take more time. On modern computers the act of redrawing the desktop (or folder you're in) is pretty minor and won't noticeably affect the performance of the machine - but it's the people who believe it will make it FASTER who infuriate me.

Rightclick refresh is a great tool. Every once in a while you'll do something with installed programs, moving or deleting files or shortcuts and your desktop won't refresh itself. It's happened to me a few times in the past. A quick rightclick refresh fixes it right up but that's the only time it should ever be used - when you need to refresh the desktop due to changes you've just made. Copying a file from D:\LocalDrive to H:\RemovalDrive doesn't involve the desktop - why are you refreshing it?

Stop doing this.

Some people seem to right-click Desktop -> Refresh all the time. They seem to think that it solves computer problems in general, or that one must do it in order to keep the computer working properly. The habit seems more common in Asian countries.

My understanding is that clicking Refresh on the desktop does nothing other than update the desktop GUI and retrieve the latest state.

The desktop is just a view of the ~/Desktop folder. Refreshing it simply checks the folder for any changes since the last time it was loaded. So it does even less than suggested.

Refresh option is just used to display the desktop contents after some modifications has been made to the desktop folder and the change is still not reflected on the display.

If your computer is already under load, refreshing the desktop could actually be counter-productive as it requires resources as well. So, not only does it not speed up the process, it might slow it down.