Chrome / Firefox Extension of the Week: Flash Video Downloader
Sometimes you just don’t want to wait for video streaming. This or the video is so compelling that you want to make an offline copy so you can open it (and show your friends) whenever you want.
While the Flash Video Downloader extension ( Chrome , Firefox ) is probably included in the annual Evil Week Lifehacker, given that you’re going to use it to download videos you don’t normally need, you won’t end up in a poor company. According to the Chrome Web Store, the extension has over two million users, and a respectable 22,000 of them gave it an average rating of 4.5 stars.
The extension couldn’t be easier to use. Install it … and that’s it. You won’t have any options you need to tweak for it to work, although you can explore its brief settings menu if you want to tweak which video formats should be available for download when it should fire (for any content larger than 100 KB or 1MB) and whether it should display a “upload” button on Facebook – which I could never find, so maybe that’s a moot point.
Flash Video Downloader has several limitations. Notably, it doesn’t allow YouTube videos to be downloaded – at least in Chrome – and it never launches for any Facebook videos I’ve watched. However, it couldn’t be easier to use.
If there is a video on the website that you can download (or record, which in some cases the extension will do), the icon will light up in the browser toolbar. Click on it and you will see all the different resolutions that you can capture videos in, as well as their expected size. You can even filter certain types of videos, for example, if you only want to download MP4, but only in Firefox.
Do you have a Chrome or Firefox extension that you really like? Tell us about it: [email protected] .