6

With all the big changes with Firefox recently, all the info about their cache location has become outdated. Or has Firefox changed so much that this question is moot?

Running mac osx 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard). I need to recover some files that are most likely still in the cache. Thanks!

Improve this question
2
  • Does anyone know if Firefox still uses a cache on Mac OSX?
    – SMBiggs
    Jul 11, 2012 at 3:35
  • My brand new Firefox install on top of OS X 10.6.8 shows the cache at .../Library/Caches/Firefox/Profiles/hm7m0wcn.default/Cache.
    – Daniel R Hicks
    Jul 11, 2012 at 16:13

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
8

According to the MozillaZine Knowledge Base article Profile folder - Firefox:

Mac

Profile folders are in one of these locations:

~/Library/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/<profile folder>
~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/<profile folder>

The tilde character (~) refers to the current user's Home folder, so ~/Library is the /Macintosh HD/Users//Library folder.

This section of that article describes the default cache location. You can also see where it is with this url: about:cache and change it by entering this one: about:config and then changing the preference named browser.cache.disk.parent_directory.

Update:

I haven't updated the screenshot, but this still works in FireFox 15.0.1.

Here's a screenshot of Firefox 13.0.1 running on OSX 0.6.8 (Snow Leopard). As you can see the cache folder has been put in a custom location on another volume using about:config.

screenshot of Firefox 13.0.1 running on OSX 0.6.8 (Snow Leopard)

Improve this answer
8
  • 1
    Neat! See "about:about" for all of the "about:" options.
    – Daniel R Hicks
    Jul 10, 2012 at 2:31
  • Unfortunately, about:cache does not include directory information--at least not in my version of Firefox (13.0.1). It shows entries and size, but that's all (sorry, can't post pictures in a comment, sigh). The website you mention (which is really useful--thanks!) says that about:cache is only good for, "Mac OS/Windows - previous to 1.5," which was a loooong time ago.
    – SMBiggs
    Jul 11, 2012 at 3:34
  • @ScottBiggs: I think you're mistaken about:cache only working on versions previous to 1.5. It works fine for me now on a Windows machine with Firefox 13.0.1 and displays its current size and location (as indicated in this article. When I get a chance tomorrow morning I'll try in on my Mac running SL and FF 13.0.1. Regardless, you can see both what it is and change it by using about:config.
    – martineau
    Jul 11, 2012 at 7:57
  • about:cache works fine on my 13.0.1 version on top of Vista.
    – Daniel R Hicks
    Jul 11, 2012 at 16:08
  • 1
    @Scott Biggs; You can always update your question with pictures showing what you see using about:cache (or there as well as in a comment put a link to an image hosted somewhere).
    – martineau
    Sep 4, 2012 at 19:24
2

Go to ~/Users/"USERNAME"/Library/Caches/Firefox/Profiles/ with "USERNAME" being the name of your home folder of your OS.

Then open the folder with a bunch of funny numbers at the beginning and ends with .default then open the cache folder.

Improve this answer
3
  • This looks very promising, but I don't see any useful files cached here--nope, not even a .jpg is anywhere within this tree. There are few subdirectories (startupCache/, OfflineCache/, and mozilla-media-cache/), but they are almost empty.
    – SMBiggs
    Jul 11, 2012 at 3:20
  • @ScottBiggs The local caches of browsers don't usually store the actual files. You can search for cached resources in about:cache or using an add-on like CacheViewer Continued.
    – Lri
    Jul 12, 2012 at 5:45
  • Found the files with obfuscated names in ~/Library/Caches/Firefox/Profiles/<profile>/cache2/entries/
    – Osmund Francis
    Sep 18, 2020 at 6:34

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.