MacOS X Download History

by Wolfram Saringer (2012-02-14)
last change: 2012-02-14

OS X obviously keeps a list of downloads (not only for Safari) to enable those protective popups 'XXX was downloaded from the internet. Are you shure you want to open it?'

Under Lion this information can be found in the file
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.QuarantineEventsV2
which is an SQLite database. Contents can be dumped using this command:

sqlite3 -header -line ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.QuarantineEventsV2 \
'SELECT LSQuarantineAgentName AS Browser, LSQuarantineDataURLString AS File FROM LSQuarantineEvent WHERE LSQuarantineAgentName <> "PubSubAgent"'

Brushed up SQL inspired by the script found in the linked article below.

Links:
TUAW: Mac OS X's 'QuarantineEvents' keeps a log of all your downloads (http://www.tuaw.com)