Editing Refrigerator (section)

== Features ==
[[File:Fridgeinterior.jpg|thumb|The inside of a home refrigerator containing a large variety of everyday food items]]

Newer refrigerators may include:
*[[Auto-defrost|Automatic defrosting]]
*A power failure warning that alerts the user by flashing a temperature display. It may display the maximum temperature reached during the power failure, and whether frozen food has defrosted or may contain harmful bacteria.
*Chilled water and ice from a dispenser in the door. Water and ice dispensing became available in the 1970s. In some refrigerators, the process of making ice is built-in so the user doesn't have to manually use ice trays. Some refrigerators have water chillers and water filtration systems.
*Cabinet rollers that lets the refrigerator roll out for easier cleaning
*Adjustable shelves and trays
*A status indicator that notifies when it is time to change the [[Filter (water)|water filter]]
*An in-door ice caddy, which relocates the ice-maker storage to the freezer door and saves approximately {{convert|60|L|cuft}} of usable freezer space. It is also removable, and helps to prevent ice-maker clogging.
*A cooling zone in the refrigerator door shelves. Air from the freezer section is diverted to the refrigerator door, to cool milk or juice stored in the door shelf.
*A drop down door built into the refrigerator main door, giving easy access to frequently used items such as milk, thus saving energy by not having to open the main door.
*A Fast Freeze function to rapidly cool foods by running the compressor for a predetermined amount of time and thus temporarily lowering the freezer temperature below normal operating levels. It is recommended to use this feature several hours before adding more than 1&nbsp;kg of unfrozen food to the freezer. For freezers without this feature, lowering the temperature setting to the coldest will have the same effect.
* Freezer Defrost: Early freezer units accumulated [[ice crystals]] around the freezing units. This was a result of humidity introduced into the units when the doors to the freezer were opened condensing on the cold parts, then freezing. This frost buildup required periodic thawing ("defrosting") of the units to maintain their efficiency. Manual Defrost (referred to as Cyclic) units are still available. Advances in automatic defrosting eliminating the thawing task were introduced in the 1950s, but are not universal, due to energy performance and cost. These units used a counter that only defrosted the freezer compartment (Freezer Chest) when a specific number of door openings had been made. The units were just a small timer combined with an electrical heater wire that heated the freezer's walls for a short amount of time to remove all traces of frost/frosting. Also, early units featured freezer compartments located within the larger refrigerator, and accessed by opening the refrigerator door, and then the smaller internal freezer door; units featuring an entirely separate freezer compartment were introduced in the early 1960s, becoming the industry standard by the middle of that decade.
These older freezer compartments were the main cooling body of the refrigerator, and only maintained a temperature of around {{convert|-6|°C|°F}}, which is suitable for keeping food for a week.

* Butter heater: In the early 1950s, the butter conditioner's patent was filed and published by the inventor Nave Alfred E. This feature was supposed to "provide a new and improved food storage receptacle for storing butter or the like which may quickly and easily be removed from the refrigerator cabinet for the purpose of cleaning."<ref>{{cite patent
| country = US
| number = 2579848
| title = Butter conditioner
| gdate = 1951-12-25
| fdate = 1949-09-17
| inventor = Alfred E. Nave
| url = https://patents.google.com/patent/US2579848
}} {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210415212713/https://patents.google.com/patent/US2579848 |date=15 April 2021 }}</ref> Because of the high interest to the invention, companies in UK, New Zealand, and Australia started to include the feature into the mass refrigerator production and soon it became a symbol of the local culture. However, not long after that it was removed from production as according to the companies this was the only way for them to meet new ecology regulations and they found it inefficient to have a heat generating device inside a refrigerator.

Later advances included automatic ice units and self compartmentalized freezing units.