Flash video cache on OS X

I just make a happy discovery: Flash stores videos it’s currently playing (eg. from YouTube, Megavideo, etc) within the /private/var/folders/.../ area.

Access it by hitting Cmd-Shift-G in Finder, typing in /private/var/folders and hitting enter, then navigate around until you see something like a TemporaryItems folder – within will be a file called something like FlashTmp0, which is the .flv file.

Copy it somewhere and rename it, and it’ll play in VLC or any other player that supports the format (like Quicktime etc with [Perian](http://perian.org) installed).

Mac

One Comment

Tiago Campos

September 26, 2009 at 1:04 am

You can also see the direct link to the .flv in the Safari menu bar “Windows” >> “Activity”! Check the biggest file…

Great work with Elegant Grunge!

Best Regard,

Tiago

Anil

November 3, 2009 at 1:21 pm

thanks for the information man, it really helped me a lot.

Mark

April 25, 2010 at 9:14 am

Thank you very much :) Finally the answer I was looking for for a long time..

Comments are closed.