Tuesday, December 3, 2013

View Web Browser Cache Images & Their EXIF Data In One Place With This Nirsoft Tool

No matter which web browser you use, it has a built-in cache that fills up pretty quickly as you surf the web, in order to speeds up things when you revisit the same websites. It might seem more of a history lesson, but for those unfamiliar with what caching is, it’s a very important web browser feature that not only helps save internet bandwidth, but also saves your web preferences, login details and other pivotal information. Within that information are also contained the image files that are fetched from websites that you’ve visited. If you want to access those images, you will usually need to dig into the Windows ‘Roaming’ directory and then further into your browser’s caching folder, and that can turn into a tedious process. WebCacheImageInfo is a new tool by Nirsoft that brings those images under one roof and displays their EXIF data.

The application only supports Windows and works with Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox,  Google Chrome and SeaMonkey, and many other browsers, with the only major exception being Opera, according to the tool’s homepage.
As with Nirsoft’s other tools, WebCacheImageInfo is portable, minimal and dead-simple. The interface feels straightforward and not complex at all. When launched, you will see that it automatically begins scanning image information, and presents a list of items.
The basic purpose of this app is to not only let you view images or where they were originated, also their pertaining metadata.  For every image file, you get to see its source URL, Web browser name, image software, camera manufacturer & model, and more.

WebCacheImageInfo will not work if you have configured your web browser to clear the cache upon exiting the app, because the cached items will longer be available for access via this tool. Nirsoft also recommends to close your current browsing session before you use WebCacheImageInfo, to ensure that all cached files are saved to the disk and become available. Clicking an image displays its preview in the lower section of the application, while double-clicking opens up a new window where you can view all the EXIF information for the image under one place. Information can also be exported to an HTML, XML or TXT file.

All in all, it’s yet another excellent tool from Nirsoft that can come in handy for several different purposes. It’s a portable app that works on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8/8.1.
Download WebCacheImageInfo