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
115 Replies
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 wrote: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).
You can do as you wish,
"add drag & drop functionality to the new downloads flyout"
that's the suggestion you are making and you should send it using the feedback button on Edge if you want it to be implemented.
- Thank you, this one was one of my top requested feature for edge.
- This looks like a straight copy from Firefox.
- hope it works as well for edge
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.
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
