By refreshing the page you will wipe your $rootscope from memory. Your application restarts.
You can use some kind of storage. That way you can save a users preference and use it again when he comes back to you application.
You can use for example $cookies or sessionStorage / localStorage.
If you want to detect refresh on your app.run you can do by this way:
In the app.run() block inject '$window' dependency and add:
app.run(['$rootScope', '$location', '$window',function($rootScope,$location, $window) {
window.onbeforeunload = function() {
// handle the exit event
};
// you can detect change in route
$rootScope.$on('$routeChangeStart', function(event, next, current) {
if (!current) {
// insert segment you want here
}
});
}]);`