Forum Discussion
Announcing the Open/Save as/Save and Delete prompts for downloads!
Update: Open/SaveAs is now available on Edge Stable ( version >= 86.0.622.38)
Greetings, Microsoft Edge Insiders!
As a part of our top feedback, we have been looking at implementing features from Microsoft Edge legacy. One of those items is a feature asking users if they want to Open, Save As, Save, or Cancel a download. This week, we're excited to announce that this setting is now available in our Dev and Canary channels! We expect all builds with version >= 87.0.629.0 to have this feature.
To enable it, navigate to edge://settings/downloads and toggle on, "Ask me what to do with each download." Once you download a file after enabling that setting, you will see options to:
- Open the file, which downloads it to a temporary folder and opens the file. This temporary folder will attempt to clear itself whenever you start a new browser session
- Save as, which opens the file explorer, allowing you to rename and choose where the file is saved
- Save the file, located under the ... button, which saves the file to your default downloads folder (you can also change this on the Downloads settings page)
- Cancel the file download entirely, this is also located under the ... button
Another feature we're adding is the ability to delete downloads directly from the browser itself. If you head to the Downloads page, you can now right-click on a downloaded item (or the ... menu for the item in the download shelf/bar) and select "Delete file." Once you do this, the file will be deleted from your computer. We hope that this will help users who like to download files automatically while still keeping their downloads folder clean.
We encourage you to give these changes a try! Have a suggestion on how to improve these new download features? Navigate to the browser's ... menu > Help and feedback > Send feedback to let us know your thoughts.
- The Microsoft Edge Product Team
There is absolutely an extra click after this change.
Before: Click link > Change folder if needed > Save
Now: Click link > Click Save As > Change folder if needed > Save
Additionally that extra click happens at the bottom of the screen (whereas the file browse dialog appears in the middle of the screen), so that extra click is probably far from where your mouse cursor was.
149 Replies
- yes, in that place whould be 'save' and 'save as' as an option.
With the introduction of this feature, the Save As no longer remembers the last save location. That's probably a bug but it makes this feature very annoying.
Even if the last location was still used when I select Save As, you've basically added an extra click to get there and I'm not sure what you've actually enabled here. Before this "feature" I could cancel the download when the save to dialog showed up. I could open the file from the bar below by just clicking on it. Am I missing something here?
Please add a way to turn this off and use the current behavior.
A much more useful feature would be the option for downloads from different sites to remember their own save locations or make the list of last save locations consistent and correct. Features that might save time for people instead of making basic tasks harder
IshaiH, yes, you are missing something. 🙂
The previous "Open" option required first saving the file. This created not just an extra click, but a whole workflow change compared with Legacy Edge and IE to deal with files that are intended to be opened once for a few seconds, but not saved -- pictures, audio files, executables (just run them), etc. Before this change, you either left the files to accumulate or had to add a step to your workflow to manually navigate to the folder (potentially difficult if you save downloads to different locations) and remove the files that you never wanted to save in the first place. This is a HUGE improvement.
Having said that, I agree with the criticism that Save As should not always revert to the Downloads folder. I would prefer that it remember and go to the last Save As location.
GraniteStateColin That's an odd behavior to me but you do you, I guess.
For me, it's rare that I download a file for a single use and want it deleted. It's definitely not worth the extra clicks on every download.
What would make sense is to make this an option. If you want a new download hidden at the bottom of the screen waiting for you to hit Save As instead of the file dialog just showing up, fine, for those of us who don't want that option, let us turn it off.
People who download a lot of files will find this new feature very annoying. I know I do.
In fact, now that it's made it's way to the prod version of Edge, I'm switching back to Chrome.I really only checked this page to see if i-am-kent ever responded to the many comments complaining about this feature.
thnks for the updates
i-am-kent I've been enjoying the Canary build of Edge for a while now and this is the first major change that I absolutely hate. I have to download lots of files to different locations and prefer the option to always prompt to Save As and to default to the last folder saved to. With this option, I now have to click the link, click Save As on the bottom bar, then navigate to the folder I want to save to each time. Best case scenario (with a pinned folder), I now have to go through 4 clicks instead of 2 in order to save a file to the last folder I was saving to.
You sure?
- That, would be great
As well as also wanting to have the option of the previous behaviour, the other thing I'd need before considering Edge a usable browser for me WRT Downloading is some additional information on the download on the shelf while the download is happening. Specifically I need it to show the download speed alongside the 'x of y' progress. Especially on a big download, seeing the download speed has slowed or gone to zero is often the quickest way to see something has gone wrong with the download.
- Until we have an ideas section to upvote things, we need to just submit feedbacks individually
- That's a great idea, David.
Perhaps there could be a tool-tip type mouseover window that appears displaying something like:
- Progress (graphical, percent, time elapsed / remaining and bytes downloaded)
- Download speed
- Total file size to be downloaded, if reported by the server
- Source URL (since sometimes due to redirects the downloaded file receives a different filename than was in the URL) and/or MIME type
Thanks for implementing this feature. Loved it for opening PDF and other document files temporarily. However, there is one thing that I would like to see changed about it. Whenever, you click "Save As" the file explorer now always opens to the default download path (usually C:\User\Downloads). I find this a bit annoying since there are times where I have a bunch of separate files I want to download that I want to put in a different folder (eg. folder on the Desktop). That means that every time I click "Save As", I have to navigate to that Desktop folder, which is a pain. I would have preferred the old way of how downloads were handled - meaning the "Save As" button opens to the last folder that you saved a download in.
So the workflow would be: Download a file -> click "Save As" -> File Explorer opens to "Downloads" -> I navigate to my folder on the Desktop -> Save the file in that folder -> I download another file -> Click "Save As" -> File Explorer opens to THE FOLDER ON THE DESKTOP -> I save the file on that Desktop folder
If you guys could modify the behaviour to this (or let the user choose the behaviour), that'd be great.
- The new flyout hopefully will take care of it.
jchow It might be a nice idea to always open the last location a file downloaded to when you clicked 'Save as', but doesn't that risk that sometimes you might inadvertently lose a file you have downloaded? If this is the case.
Something I am missing is that the 'Downloads' option no longer shows the location of where files have been downloaded to.
In Classic Edge this didn't matter too much because the nice little 'Downloads' tab was incorporated into the Favourites and Reading List button, but hunting for where files have been downloaded to in Chromium Edge takes at least two more clicks and becomes cumbersome.
As shown in the attached screenshot on a mac, the current 'Downloads' button from the Settings and more button no longer shows WHERE the item is kept - it just provides a link to 'show in finder' (or File Explorer on Windows 10)
Would appreciate an option between the two like the old prompt where to save we had before. Prompting what to do every time and not prompting at all seem like two extremes. When we had the option originally to just specify where to save using the standards windows save dialog, which seems like a middle ground.
Anyone's workflow that involves downloading a lot of stuff to different directories will be impacted by the removal of the just prompt to save. Either having to click the link, then move to the bottom of the window and find the download button, then click the save as or download everything to a set directory and sort them out later. Seems like a bad UX design.
I'm not against adding additional ways to solve the original issue, but the complete removal of the old way.
Reverend EvvL X same here !! The old way work best for me. Pls i-am-kent get reminded that to keep 2 option for both old and new.
