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With Safari 5 in Lion, I used the Activity window to save video files.

Safari 6 has no Activity window.

With Mountain Lion, what is the best way to replicate what I could do before?

Graham Perrin
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Dan
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6 Answers6

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The Activity Window is gone in Safari 6, but you can get most of the functionality with the Page Resources window of Web Inspector.

To enable that, go to Safari's preferences, and on the Advanced tab, check Show Develop menu in menu bar: Safari Advanced Preferences Tab

Then you can view the page's resources by clicking Show Page Resources… in the Develop menu, or pressing ⌥⌘A.

That will give you a window with a sidebar similar to this one (which I took from a Youtube page):

Page Resources sidebar

It groups things a bit differently than the old activity window, but it should display all the same things. FLV files should be in the Other folder, and you can use the search bar at the bottom to filter for certain strings.

Alternatively, you may be interested in the ClickToPlugin Safari extension, which can do HTML5 replacement of a lot of Flash web video, and in most cases gives you the option to download the file directly just by right-clicking on the video.

Jason Salaz
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robmathers
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  • +1. ClickToPlugin suggestion works great, also relevant to Lion users who've upgraded to Safari version 6 (like me). – Phil M Aug 06 '12 at 05:46
  • "Due to Apple’s new development policies, version 3.2 is the final version of ClickToPlugin." Does that mean it does not work on later versions of Safari? – WGroleau Jan 08 '18 at 04:17
  • Apple and/or Google changed things so that in Resources from youtube, the only thing in "Other" was "atr". Closed the Resource and re-opened: instead of 'atr' there was something else. 'Save file' pulled a file that was neither mp4 nor flv. 'Copy as cURL' got a command that Google rejected. Opened the resource window a third time (same video), and there was no "Other" but two large files eventually appeared under "XHRs." Don't know their formats, but I can tell they're different. youtube-dl DOES work, but it deletes the results unless you use the '-k' switch. – WGroleau Jan 08 '18 at 04:58
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  1. Enable the develop menu from the advanced tab of the preferences window.
  2. Press option-command-I and reload the page for the video.

  3. Double-click the resource for the video:

  4. Focus the location bar and press option-return. (Command-S doesn't save the complete file.)

Another way to download YouTube videos is to use youtube-dl:

brew install youtube-dl
youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=$id

youtube-dl includes the title and ID of the video in the filename by default. It also works with other video sharing sites, and for example it downloads all parts of videos at twitch.tv that are served as multiple resources.

Lri
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YouTube Options is a Safari extension that shows Download Options -- WebM, MP4, FLV, 3GP, 3D -- right beneath the video.

Available for Chrome and Opera too.

Zo219
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There's a great application called Jaksta that I use that makes it really easy to download all kinds of media from the web. All you have to do is open Jaksta, then go to Safari and play any video or music you want. Jaksta then downloads the file and converts it automatically. Here's a review of Jaksta from MacNews:

Jaksta supports just about all streaming formats and protocols (including FLV, HTTP, RTMP, IceCast, WMV, ASF, MP3, MP4, SWF, etc.), which means it can capture video from thousands of web sites including YouTube and Facebook. What's more, because of Jaksta’s powerful audio-capturing capabilities, customers can download streaming audio from their favorite music and radio sites.

In addition to allowing Mac users to save their favorite videos, songs, and radio programs, Jaksta can automatically convert the downloaded files to a variety of devices. For example, you can save files as QuickTime for the iPod, iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV, as well as import 'em into iTunes. A drop-down menu lets you choose the conversion method you want.

Jaksta can automatically convert captured media files to other formats. The default setting is Default Conversion. This is best if you’d like everything that you download to be easily playable on your Mac. For example, it converts downloaded FLV’s to .mov files that play perfectly in QuickTime.

Here's a description from the Jaksta website:

Jaksta for Mac is easy to use: just open Jaksta, then play the video, music or audio you’d like to capture. You will find that your media is recorded up to ten times faster than playback speed, since Jaksta is grabbing files directly from the web site where they are hosted. This downloading technique means that the quality of the recorded files are perfect copies of the original.

Anyway, I highly recommend Jaksta (and I'm not affiliated with them in any way).

Community
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pasawaya
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I use and like many of the Safari extensions for flv/youtube/html5 etc. But a more general solution for the missing activity monitor list is provided by hetima with SafariStand

nohillside
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luser
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The easiest way to download flv files on most sites is to use click2plugin safari extension

Ball
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    Can you add a bit more details, e.g. a link for the plugin and explaining why you think it's the easiest way? – nohillside Oct 28 '12 at 10:52