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davidra

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 12, 2011
413
4
I've had my iMac for four years or so, but I've never used Safari....I was used to using Firefox and stuck with it. But recently it's become such a resource hog that it becomes unusable several times a day. I've messed with extension and removed most of them but it doesn't seem to help much. So I'm willing to give Safari a chance, but it appears that it doesn't have a plug-in that allows direct video downloads to MP4 (or anything else for that matter) except for third-party programs. Is that a correct observation, or am I missing something? Video Downloader for FF adds a little arrow to the toolbar; click it and you can download any video file. Does nothing like that exist for Safari? Or do I need to try Chrome?
 
Yes that is correct, you cannot download videos which are intended for streaming by just using Safari it does not have that capability or plugin built-in. Same thing for chrome, some type of extension would have to be used. VLC has similar capture functions but it would require a second computer, or at a minimum for it to download, the website has to allow video downloads in the first place.

Chrome is a choice as it performs fairly well on Mac OS, but often complained on as a memory hogger. It does use lots of resources, but also depends on the number of tabs open. For lighter resource usage on both CPU and RAM, Safari should come out on top.
 
Well, interesting and disappointing. Maybe by avoiding those kinds of plug-ins and extensions they minimize resource use, but it sure is easy to click a button on FF and download videos. There are a number of good choices, too. I guess I'll go back to trying to find a way to use FF as a bare-bones browser. Thanks...
 
I agree, it would be nice to have it, but I think such a feature is often considered to be prone for copyright infringement type usage. I don't think we will see one added.

Keeping your FF extension plugins to a minimum should help some too. Keep nothing that you don't regularly use or need.
 
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