Static File Caching in Nuxt: An Easy and Practical Strategy

Lighthouse kept warning me about inefficient cache lifetimes, even though I had already added caching for my static files. The missing piece was Nuxt Image and its generated /_ipx URLs . In this post, I’ll share the simple caching setup I use for Nuxt build files, public assets, and optimized images without risking stale content after deployment. The basic rule is simple: Cache files aggressively when changing the file also changes its URL. Be more careful when the same URL can serve different content later. You have probably seen the same Lighthouse warning I have: Use efficient cache lifetimes. Browser caching for static files is usually straightforward. You add a Cache-Control header, choose a reasonable lifetime, and the browser avoids downloading the same files again on every visit. However, in a Nuxt application, not every static-looking file should use the same caching policy. Nuxt build files are automatically versioned. Files inside public/ usually are not. Nuxt Image also creates transformed image URLs under /_ipx , which need their own cache rule. In this post, I’ll go through the setup I use, including the Nuxt Image rule that was missing during my latest Lighthouse audit. The simple caching rule The most important question is not whether a file is an image, font, or JavaScript file. The important question is: Will the URL change when the file changes? When the answer is yes, you can safely cache the file for a very long time. When the answer is no, you should use a shorter cache lifetime. Otherwise, visitors may continue seeing an old version after you deploy an update. What the cache directives mean Here are the main directives used in this setup: public allows browsers and shared caches such as CDNs to store the response. max-age controls how long the browser considers the file fresh. s-maxage controls how long shared caches such as Cloudflare consider it fresh. immutable tells the browser that the file is not expected to change while that URL exists.