When you surf the internet, the browser saves on your computer, in a hidden folder that represents the browser cache, images, videos and other elements of the websites. These elements can be many things: javascript, html, cookies, videos and images or photos. The cache is used to speed up the loading of websites so that, the second time you open the same web page, the elements do not need to be downloaded again. When you reconnect to the web page later, the browser first searches the cache for the items already downloaded and this explains why the sites visited often load faster. It then becomes interesting, every now and then and after a certain period, to view the images and videos downloaded in the browser cache . This can be useful to recover images that have not been saved manually, to view and download videos offline and also to take a look at the history of internet browsing.
The browser cache can also be browsed like a normal computer folder but, as the files are listed all together and in a confused way, it becomes difficult to find visible elements such as photos or videos. Furthermore, it is also difficult to understand from which site a certain image or video was downloaded. For this reason, small programs developed to extract files, images and videos from the cache of Internet Explorer, Opera, Chrome and Firefox browsers can always be useful.
1) ImageCacheView allows you to review and browse images of sites open with Firefox and Chrome, and we talk about it in another article.
2) The free and open source Cache Copy program allows you to move to a user-defined folder, only the images saved in the cache of Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox .
When you start the program, after installation, it recognizes the default browser so you just need to specify the "target" folder in which to save the images. You can also manually configure another folder so this program can also be used to extract all the images or photos from any part of the computer.
3) Video Cache View is a small portable tool for Windows that is used to extract videos from the browser cache . Video portals such as Youtube, for example, download the videos seen in streaming on the computer, therefore, displaying them in the cache, allows you to view them even from the offline computer and save them on the PC .
They can then be viewed with programs like GomPlayer or VLC. After downloading VideoCacheView in zip version, extract the archive, launch the .exe file and then wait until the scan is completed. The Nirsoft program simultaneously searches the cache folders of Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, Internet Explorer or other browsers running on the system. From the advanced options you can add a folder manually to search for videos on its internet. Video Cache View also allows you to filter various elements, identify videos and save videos. The names of the files are often not recognizable but just look at the site from which they come and their size to understand if they are reproducible or not.
4) To see all the cache files saved on browsers in an easy to view and browse, with all the elements identified by type, site from which they come, size and date, there are different tools depending on the browser used.
Specifically we have:
Chrome Cache View
Mozilla Cache view for Firefox
IE Cache Viewer for Internet Explorer
Opera Cache View
Each of them can be launched without installation and to automatically see all the cache files, images and videos included.
In the same network, it is possible to view the sites visited on other PCs by sniffing internet traffic.
If needed, remember that you can always empty and clear your browser cache.
