Forum Discussion
MicrosoftIntroducing the new downloads experience
The new Microsoft Edge recently turned one year old, over the last year we’ve heard your feedback about the downloads experience. While there’s a lot you liked, a common criticism was that it was often hard to notice new downloads in the tray at the bottom of the window. Closing the tray to clear up screen real estate also prevented you from monitoring your download progress, and it was difficult to get back to your downloads later. Today, we’re thrilled to introduce a major update to downloads which should address all of this feedback and more.
When you start a download, a new menu will now appear in the top-right corner with all your active downloads in one place. This menu is easily dismissible so you can continue browsing uninterrupted. Best of all, you can monitor your overall download progress right from the toolbar thanks to the new progress ring on the downloads button.
Simply click on the downloads button at any time to view all your downloads again. You can hover over or right-click on files in the list to pause, restart, or cancel a download. You can also select See more to view and manage your past downloads as well. And as with the recently updated experiences for favorites, history, and as of today Collections, you can even pin () the downloads menu open so you can monitor your downloads in detail while you browse.
The downloads button will remain in the toolbar until all the downloads have finished, at which point the progress ring will change into a green checkmark. Simply open the menu to see your finished downloads and hide the downloads button again.
If you haven’t downloaded a file recently, you can still access the new downloads menu from the Settings and More menu (). And in response to overwhelming feedback, you can finally choose to always show the downloads button on the toolbar for one-click access even when you aren't in the process of downloading a file.
For those of you who prefer a more immersive view of your downloads, you can easily get back to the downloads page by selecting Manage downloads in the downloads menu () or typing edge://downloads in the address bar.
We’re so excited to hear what you think of the new downloads experience, which is currently available in the Canary and Dev channels. Please send us your thoughts by submitting feedback in-app and in the comments below.
— William Devereux, Senior Program Manager, Microsoft Edge
While some may prefer this new downloads menu, the inability to drag downloaded files directly from the menu to other locations and applications has made working with downloaded files very cumbersome after the removal of the bottom download tray. Further, not being able to see a list of recently downloaded files without sacrificing screen space by pinning the downloads menu to the side of the window defeats the stated purpose of its implementation of clearing up screen real estate (attached is an example of the lost screen space due to this).
My suggestion: Allow files to be dragged to other locations & applications from the new downloads menu and/or provide an option to use the previous download tray at the bottom of the window as it was.
NK_07 Completely agree with this. A common workflow for me is downloading 2-3 PDFs from our CRM and dragging them directly from the downloads bar into a draft email in Outlook. This new way of working really slows me down (enough to go back to Chrome fairly soon).
smalljoshua It messed with my workflow too. I was able to disable and revert to the old bar by adding this at the end of Edge target
-disable-features=msDownloadsHub
Love this new downloads flyout, more than the download bar that appeared at the bottom.
just one thing that many other people also asked,
Remember the Pinned state of these new flyouts. when we Pin the downloads/favorites/collection/history flyouts, it should be remembered by Edge, so that the next time we open them, we don't have to Pin them again.
Also please show Save and Save as options by default on each download, don't hide one of them under a (...) button.
thank you
William Devereux Is it possible to go back to the old experience? With this new experience I cannot drag files into applications for easy upload.
ttsoldier wrote:William Devereux Is it possible to go back to the old experience? With this new experience I cannot drag files into applications for easy upload.
Why not add drag and drop to the new flyout instead of going back to the old design?
I love the new design and the way I see it, adding drag and drop feature will solve your problem.
William Devereux I hope that the size of the downloaded file can be displayed after the download task is completed. In addition, I hope that a button can be added to delete the download task and make it disappear completely. Thank you.
My main objection to this - as a web developer - is that with the bar at the bottom and all new downloads appearing a the left hand spot on the bar, it's easy for me to create screen instructions for someone to click the downloaded file to open it (with a big obvious arrow pointing to it). That's completely impossible with this new design - no way for the developer to know where that downloads tab will appear relative to the web content. So it makes it much harder for me to create instructions that work for multiple browsers - I have to detect edge and then show them screen shots of how it MIGHT look depending on a lot of factors. The old method (pretty consistent between various browsers) would allow me to create easy to understand and follow instructions for (for instance) firing up a zoom meeting, or downloading a CSV. Now I need to craft all sorts of different instructions for edge. Not friendly. It's hard enough to explain this to users without moving crap around arbitrarily. If you like the new downloads bar up top fine, but expect it will cause MORE confusion for those not intimately familiar with browser tech because people already can't follow instructions and if those instructions point to a nonexistant toolbar they'll be even more confused.
- Spoiler
Lee Drake wrote:My main objection to this - as a web developer - is that with the bar at the bottom and all new downloads appearing a the left hand spot on the bar, it's easy for me to create screen instructions for someone to click the downloaded file to open it (with a big obvious arrow pointing to it). That's completely impossible with this new design - no way for the developer to know where that downloads tab will appear relative to the web content. So it makes it much harder for me to create instructions that work for multiple browsers - I have to detect edge and then show them screen shots of how it MIGHT look depending on a lot of factors. The old method (pretty consistent between various browsers) would allow me to create easy to understand and follow instructions for (for instance) firing up a zoom meeting, or downloading a CSV. Now I need to craft all sorts of different instructions for edge. Not friendly. It's hard enough to explain this to users without moving crap around arbitrarily. If you like the new downloads bar up top fine, but expect it will cause MORE confusion for those not intimately familiar with browser tech because people already can't follow instructions and if those instructions point to a nonexistant toolbar they'll be even more confused.
the new flyout downloads experience is WAY better than how it looked before.
it always appears in the same place, you don't see the flyout menu appearing at the bottom right, bottom left or top left, it's always there at the top right side of Edge, in the specified toolbar area.
Edge is not the only browser using this improved flyout experience, the old downloads bar came from chrome and it was awful.
Internet Explorer also had similar experience like the new Edge, Firefox does too right now.
- -disable-features=msDownloadsHub
You can always disable this "new download".
I don't like it.
The features are not of my liking.
I still want the bottom bar and nothing you are making is useful for me.
Why are you punishing us? why are we forced to use this new download or go back to Google's Chrome?
Give me a flag to "use the old download bar"- It’s the kind of thin Apple does. Make a change like it’s the best thing ever. The user population hates snd and complains to no end. Then in about a year and half, an update quietly puts everything thing back the way it was. Please MS, don’t be Apple. Give us options that work for the individual user
- Honestly I liked the old download tray much better, but a lot of people seem to like this new downloads experience. Could there be an option to easily set our preference?
- A lot of heated exchanges about it were deleted. Alot of people hate it. But they are cancelled by a certain user which may have something to do with Microsoft because it seems that user consistently appears and "corrects" everyone who says they do not like it.
William Devereux for those of us who need to download several files per day, documents, images, etc, it's a nuisance as it covers the page. Very bad UX.
Offer an option to get rid of the flyout.... and use the old unobstructive bottom bar.Thank you HotCakeX but this is not an option. It's a blindfold.
The horizontal bar interferes with nothing, is not distracting nor does it need scrolling huge lengths or extra clicking to grab what you need. Not to mention it stays on the page you clicked for the download. This new flyout is a usability downgrade.
- I totally dislike this new UI. I would prefer to have the downloads at the bottom.
William DevereuxI really like this new manager, but I've noticed that you can pinch to zoom with the trackpad or touch in these new UI elements (such as Downloads, Collections, Favourites, and History) which looks very unnatural and doesn't feel right. Hopefully the ability to zoom within these new parts of the UI can be disabled?
- I hadn't yet noticed that one could pinch zoom in the flyouts. That's solved the issue I would have posted about whereby the text of the speed, amount out of how much etc while a download is ongoing is too small for me to be able to read it. So my vote is NOT to remove the zoom functionality. Have an option to turn it on or off by all means.
