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Are youtube videos cached to disk?

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  • Last reply by WestEnd

x100
x100
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When I play a youtube video, are the buffered video sections cached or written anywhere to disk or is it just stored in RAM? Does this behavior depend on the "browser.cache.disk.enable" settings?

The Tor Project says that vanilla Firefox writes HTML5 videos to disk (apparently to the OS temporary folder, not the cache), even in private browsing mode, which from what I have read should have the disk cache disabled (source: https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser/design/#disk-avoidance). I feel that YouTube does not use the standard "video" HTML tag, so does this behavior extend to youtube?

I know that youtube videos used to be written to disk via Flash Player, but since youtube has switched to HTML5, are videos still buffered to disk?

If youtube videos are cached to disk, how do I find and delete them?

When I play a youtube video, are the buffered video sections cached or written anywhere to disk or is it just stored in RAM? Does this behavior depend on the "browser.cache.disk.enable" settings? The Tor Project says that vanilla Firefox writes HTML5 videos to disk (apparently to the OS temporary folder, not the cache), even in private browsing mode, which from what I have read should have the disk cache disabled (source: https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser/design/#disk-avoidance). I feel that YouTube does not use the standard "video" HTML tag, so does this behavior extend to youtube? I know that youtube videos used to be written to disk via Flash Player, but since youtube has switched to HTML5, are videos still buffered to disk? If youtube videos are cached to disk, how do I find and delete them?

Modified by x100

All Replies (1)

WestEnd
WestEnd
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You could also ask this of Youtube since the stream is coming form them as well. How tor project works that is up to how tor projects does their own FF has nothing to do with how they do their setup. Even if cached I doubt they stay there when your done watching them. Are you having some issue with youtube then you should contact them about it.