WebCacheImageInfo is a cross-browser image cache explorer for Windows

Martin Brinkmann
Nov 27, 2013
Updated • Nov 28, 2013
Software
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Depending on how active you are on the Internet, the cache of your web browser of choice may fill rather quickly with content.

The cache, for those who do not know, has been designed to speed things up the next time they are required.

So, instead of downloading the same website logo every time you open a new page on a website, it is only loaded once remotely -- on first connect -- and then loaded from cache locally whenever it is needed again.

This saves bandwidth and may also improve the time it takes to render web pages on the Internet.

While the cache is ideal for that, it needs to be noted that it will use local disk space, and may also reveal information about your web browsing habits.

WebCacheImageInfo

web-cache-image-info

Nirsoft's newest application is a cross-browser image explorer that runs on Windows PCs. The program supports Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox,  Google Chrome and SeaMonkey, and likely also variants of those browsers.

Opera is not supported according to the program's homepage, as it saves images in Webp format to the cache.

The program scans the default cache location of all supported browsers by default, but will only display images in its interface if the browser in question is closed.

As long as it is open on your system, it is not displaying a single image in its interface.

Once you close your web browser of choice, you will notice that it will update the interface with cache related information.

Note: The software uses the default cache location by default. If you have configured browsers to use different locations on your system, you need to specify them under Options > Advanced Options (F9). Here you can set custom caches for Firefox, Internet Explorer (10 is separate but not mentioning of 11), and Chrome.

Each cached image is displayed with its url, the browser name, the image software it was created, modified or saved in, the file size and local location, as well as camera make and model if it is a photo.

It is as usually possible to sort the information in various ways by clicking on the column headers in the interface. You can sort by browser, image software or size for example if you like.

A click on an image displays it in the preview pane in the application. If your cache is large, you may want to use the search feature to find particular images you are interested in.

A right-click displays a context menu with additional options. Here you can open the selected image on the Web, or save the list of selected images as a txt, xml, csv or html file on the local system.

An option to open it directly on the local system is missing, unfortunately.

Verdict

WebCacheImageInfo serves several purposes. It can be used to check whether browser caches leak information about visited websites on the local system, and to browse images that you may want to save to your local system for safe keeping (since the cached versions will get deleted eventually).

The biggest issue that I had during usage was that it did not include an option to save those images directly to another location, and that there was not any information about image resolutions either.

It is a great lightweight portable program otherwise that will surely come in handy, especially if you use multiple browsers on your system.

Now Read: How to clear browser caches

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Comments

  1. Terrine said on November 28, 2013 at 3:23 pm
    Reply

    Martin, look up the difference between content and contents.

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on November 28, 2013 at 5:13 pm
      Reply

      Did, thanks!

  2. Mojo said on November 27, 2013 at 11:39 pm
    Reply

    To clarify it, if I see developers supporting Opera it gives me confidence that software has some soul in it.

    1. SubgeniusD said on November 28, 2013 at 9:09 am
      Reply

      With Nirsoft “OperaCacheView” we didn’t need another program. Unfortunately this utility now only works with older Opera versions (10.5) so I was very interested in this article and disappointed that Opera was excluded. From the Nirsoft website:

      Know Problem
      The new version of Opera now save or compress the files in different format and put them in a subfolder under the main folder. Currently, OperaCacheView cannot extract the files in the new format, and thus copying the cache files won’t work in the new versions of Opera. I hope that this problem will be fixed in future version.

      That was 1 1/2 years ago. I wish he had written “I plan to fix this problem in the immediate future”. Now with the core Opera changes, version 12 users can forget about OperaCacheView (which was useful for extracting video files for instance).

  3. Mojo said on November 27, 2013 at 11:36 pm
    Reply

    Even this crippled Opera is better then other browsers and this developer dis it, pathetic.

  4. Paul(us) said on November 27, 2013 at 9:50 pm
    Reply

    Nice article again Martin,
    Actually this article leaves me with one question let me try to enlighten you:
    I use a cache program (Named O&O CleverCache Professional Edition 7.1.2787) for optimization access to the disk. So far so good!

    Can I use this WebCacheImageInfo in peaceful co-excision with main already installed O&O CleverCache Pro?
    In outer words do they not byte one and outer?

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on November 27, 2013 at 9:56 pm
      Reply

      This program checks the cache folder of your browser. If images are in there, it will list them. I do not think you will run into any compatibility issues here.

      1. Paul(us) said on November 29, 2013 at 3:25 pm
        Reply

        Thank you for your thought’s and answer Martin!

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