And since they are already available on your computer, you can move them from the cache directory from where they will be deleted eventually, to another directory on your computer. That’s handy for instance if you have been browsing photos or wallpapers lately and want some of them saved permanently on your computer.

Browsing the cache manually is not such a pleasant experience on the other hand, as you usually cannot link file names to sites or contents.

The free software Cache Copy changes this by allowing you to move images out of the Firefox or Chrome cache automatically.

When you first start the program you see that the default browser and profile have been selected automatically. You can switch to another cache folder if you want to move images that you have seen in another browser. The program works in all folders, which means that you can also use it to copy images out of regular folders on your computer.

All that’s left then is to select a target folder for the images, and look at the parameters to adjust them to your needs.

• Include images up to makes sure that only new images are copied and not all images.
• Include images larger than copies images even if their file size is larger than the selected size.
• The last entry does the same but only resolution wise.

You can change or disable the parameters if needed. You can download Cache Copy from the developer website. The program requires the Microsoft .Net Framework 4.0.

Nirsoft has released comparable programs. Video Cache View looks for videos in the browser cache, Firefox Download View and Chrome Download View for browser specific solutions, and Website Sniffer for a realtime application.

Before we start with explanations on how to clear a browser cache, we are going to look at the cache briefly. What is it? Why is it there in first place? The cache is a temporary storage on your computer. It is usually located on a hard drive but can be moved freely around, for instance to removable drives or even to the RAM. Page elements are stored in the cache whenever you visit a website. This is done to speed up the loading times on your next visit, or if you navigate to another page on the website.

A basic example. Say you view ten pages on Ghacks. Instead of having to download the static Ghacks logo ten times you only download it once from the server. The logo is loaded from cache when you open the other nine pages of the website. This saves bandwidth and connections to the server which speeds up the display of the website in the web browser.

The cache can be the source of problems as well. This is for instance the case if I change the Ghacks logo after it has been stored in your cache. Your browser may display the old logo even though a new one has been uploaded to the site. While it is usually not a problem for logos and such, it could very well be problematic if you get a “site maintenance” information which does not go away, even if your friends are telling you that they can access the site again.

That’s why it is important to know how to clear the browser cache. Unfortunately, it is a different procedure with every Internet browser. This guide covers the five popular browsers Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and Safari.

How To Clear A Browser Cache

Internet Explorer 8, 9 and newer

• Click Tools > Safety > Delete Browsing History
• Or, press Ctrl-Shift-Del
• Or, click Tools > Internet Options > Delete
• Or, open Start Menu, click Control Panel, select Internet Options > Delete

Make sure Temporary Internet Files is selected. A click on Delete clears the browser cache in Internet Explorer.

Mozilla Firefox 3.5, 4 and newer

• Click Tools > Options > Advanced > Network > Clear Now
• Or click Firefox > History > Clear Recent History
• Or, press Ctrl-Shift-Del

Make sure Cache is selected in the options. It may also be switch the time range to everything to make sure that everything that is currently stored in the cache gets deleted.

Opera

• Click Menu > Settings > Clear Private Data

Make sure Delete Entire Cache is selected in the options before you click on the Delete button.

Google Chrome

• Click Wrench > Tools > Clear Browsing Data
• Or, press Ctrl-Shift-Del
• Or, load chrome://settings/advanced and click on Clear browsing data

Make sure empty the cache is selected before you click on the clear browsing data button.

Safari

• Click Safari > Empty Cache

Clearing the browser cache manually, Cache Locations

You can also clear the browser cache manually. It is usually not necessary but handy to know anyway.

Internet Explorer

• Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files
• Windows 7, Vista: C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files

Mozilla Firefox

• Windows XP: C:\Document and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\code.default\Cache
• Windows 7, Vista: C:\Users\username\AppData\ Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\code.default\Cache
• Linux: /.mozilla/firefox/.default/Cache/
• Mac: ~/Users/username/Library/Caches/Firefox/
  Profiles/code.default/Cache

Google Chrome

• Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\
• Windows 7, Vista: C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cache
• Linux: ~/.cache/google-chrome
• Mac: ~/Library/Caches/Google/Chrome

Opera

• Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Opera\Opera
• Windows Vista, 7: c:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Opera\Opera\application_cache\
• Mac: Check Menu > Help > About Opera.
• Linux: Check Menu > Help > About Opera.

Safari

• Windows XP: c:\Document and Settings\username\Application Data\Apple Computer\Safari
• Windows Vista, 7: C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Apple Computer\Safari
• Mac: ~/Library/Caches/Safari/

One of the best options therefor is to use third party tools like CCleaner to clean data left by the web browser on the computer system.

The Firefox and Google Chrome add-on Click&Clean offers an alternative to third party tools by providing those features directly in the supported web browser.

The Google Chrome extension offers deeper configuration options than the Firefox add-on, the end result on the other hand can be the same (depending on the configuration).

Firefox Click&Clean Add-on

The options are divided into three groups. Clear private data will delete the web browsing data either directly when triggered manually or on browser exit. An external application can be integrated into the add-on so that it will be run as well. The advanced options finally allow the user to delete Flash Cookies from the system.

Google Chrome Click&Clean Extensions

The Chrome extension looks completely different and offers customization that the Firefox add-on does not offer.

A click on the items in the left sidebar opens in depth configuration options that include all clear browsing data options of the browser plus more. It is for instance possible to remove Flash cookies, Silverlight cookies, the Java cache, Google Gears data, extension local storage, cookies and SQL databases. There are even options to delete the recycle bin and temporary files of the operating system.

It is furthermore possible to configure when and how data is cleared with options to delete data manually or automatically. The option to launch an external application with arguments is available as well in Chrome.

That still is not everything that the Google Chrome extension has to offer. A click on the extension’s icon in the Chrome toolbar opens a menu with quick access to clearing the browsing data and new features like accessing the browser’s video history, memory usage and third party options like launching the system’s defragmenter or disk cleanup.

The Chrome extensions offers more than the Firefox add-on does. Both add-ons are available from the developer website and the official extension galleries on Mozilla.com and Google.com

The cache is conveniently placed in the installation directory as well. You find the default Chrome cache location under C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cache if you are running Windows 7.

There are several reasons why someone would want to change the location and size of the Chrome cache. Solid State Drives and system partitions with low storage space come to mind. And some users may want to move the cache location to the RAM instead, to speed up things, get the cache auto deleted on exit or avoid to many write cycles on the system partition.

The only official option to relocate the cache and change its size are two command line switches that need to be added to the Chrome shortcut. That’s not the most elegant solution, considering that these shortcuts are not executed if Chrome is the default browser and a web address is launched from a third party software.

• --disk-cache-dir
• --disk-cache-size

The disk cache dir parameter defines a new location of the Chrome cache, while disk cache size changes the cache limit. Here is an example:

--disk-cache-dir=”d:\cache” --disk-cache-size=104857600

This changes the location of the Google Chrome cache to d:\cache, and the limit of the cache to 100 Megabytes.

How to do change the Chrome shortcut then to apply those new cache directions?

In Windows, you locate the Chrome shortcut (on the desktop, start menu or taskbar), right-click it and select properties. The shortcut tab should open in a new window. Locate the Target field in the tab and append the cache directions to the end of the field, e.g.

C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe --disk-cache-dir=”d:\cache” --disk-cache-size=104857600

Some users may want to limit the cache even further, to an absolute minimum. Those users can set the disk cache size parameter to 1, which works best for all cases.

Now another step is required to ensure that Chrome is using the right cache location and size when a link is clicked (this is only necessary if Chrome is the default system browser). Windows users need to open the Windows Registry and do some Registry hacking for this. Open the Registry with Windows-R, typing regedit and the enter key.

Now locate the Registry key

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ChromeHTML\shell\open\command

You should find a path to the Chrome executable there. All we need to do is to append the cache location and size to the path so that Chrome uses the right caching information when links are clicked and Chrome is not open at that time.

Simply add --disk-cache-dir=”d:\cache” --disk-cache-size=104857600 after chrome.exe”, so that it looks like the following now:

“C:\Users\Martin\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe” --disk-cache-dir=”d:\cache” --disk-cache-size=104857600 -- “%1″

There is an alternative to adding the location command line parameter to Chrome. Symbolic links can be used to move cache location from its original path to another one.

You can check out How To Move Large Apps Or Games To Another Drive if you want to create the junction manually. We recommend to use a program like Steam Mover to do that, as it offers to make the change without having to use the command line.

The Chrome developers should consider adding options to the graphical user interface to change the location and size of the cache.

CCleaner is also the requirement obviously for anyone who wants to use Click&Clean since it won’t do anything if CCleaner is not installed on the computer system. Besides placing a link in the Quick Launch Bar Click&Clean adds buttons to the web browsers Internet Explorer and Firefox which can also be used to quickly clean the system using CCleaner.

The advantage of using Click&Clean is minimal and probably only useful for optimizers and users who run CCleaner several times during a session and do not want to click more than once. Everyone else is better off using CCleaner independently.