Find & Save Played YouTube Video from Browser’s Cache


We watch a few dozen of videos a day for entertainment. Any video we play get stored in cache memory, so we can replay that  your favorite video multiple times from local cache. But, did you ever tried to pull the videos from the cache memory/folder ?  HERE IS a simple tutorial that help you to extract and save YouTube videos from browsers cache  for playing it offline in the future. And, we are using Chrome browser here

1. Watch and enjoy any video online on YouTube.

2. After you watch the video, if you want to extract it from cache, then right click on Chrome Browser icon (on  Start menu or Desktop) and open properties. On “Target” box copy the location of chrome, that should be something like this “C:\Users\computername\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\”  (see screenshot)

Chrome browser properties

3. Paste the path to address bar on “My Computer” or “Windows Explorer (Press Win + E )”. Hit the “Enter” key and then, Go to “User Data > Default > Cache”.

4.) As files in the cache does not give you any clue which one is the YouTube video. For this, Right Click and sort the items according to “Date modified”  in Descending Order. The latest Cached data (video) will come up to the Top and has large file compared to other cache entries.

5.) Open the video file (typically large in size) with VLC player as it’s the best All-in one media Player that can play almost every format. After you find out the video on Cache folder, copy the file and rename to “filename.flv”- choose filename as per your convenience.

Here are a few situations when you will find this method useful ;
1.) Once the video stored in Your Browser Cache you don’t need to download video again but just extract it from browser cache, this is will save your bandwidth

2.) There are many Chrome Extensions  that simply the task of downloading YouTube Videos, but there are downside of using extensions – 1.) Some extension might slow down the Chrome performance. 2.) Sometimes you would find in compatibility issue – the Google folks always change their YouTube codes. And, you have to wait for the new update / release of extensions.

3.)There are software to download YouTube videos, but most of them are developed for Windows.With this method, you can download YouTube videos on any System such as Windows, Linux and Mac.

Related : Tubbi Pokki – Browse YouTube Videos from Your Taskbar |Download YouTube and Facebook Videos from Web Browser Cache


Author:  Ishank Badhani   Article Posted on:  Apr 6, 2011   Posted in:  
  • Saipriya_us

    Thanks a lot! It worked

    • http://innolea.com/ Ishank Badhani

      I am glad it works for you. You’ll find a lot of good stuff here on Innolea. I recommend you to try Pokki, http://bit.ly/AbHE4t

  • Asdew

    It works well, Thanks!!