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
- Please for the love of god just add a setting to disable this. The problem with the ribbon at the bottom was that you forced people who choose where to download each time to click an extra button each time. Please change that too!!!! If I want to pick where to download each time, just pop up the file save dialog like Chrome does and like you used to. Why do we need to inject extra clicks to the user experience???? I hate this feature so much!!
You say "a common criticism" but ignore the proportion of normal users that never complained about this. There now I have given you some real user feedback that everyone wants because why would anyone want to click a download link and then Save As to get the file save dialog every friggen time?!- As I remember, there was an option to customize that behavior.
Wyatt C Jackson I searched many times in both settings and flags and of course online. I couldn't find any way to avoid the delay and click each time I want to download something. Kinda feels like users like me are getting punished for not wanting to dump all our downloads in a downloads folder.
- William Devereux
Thank you for all of your feedback! Starting with today's Canary build (91.0.851.0), we've added a few additional ways to quickly access the full page. Learn more.
- I totally dislike this new UI. I would prefer to have the downloads at the bottom.
- William DevereuxHey everyone! Thanks for the passionate feedback about the new downloads experience. We've been listening very closely to your feedback, and I'm excited to share that drag-and-drop is now supported in today's Canary build! Hopefully this change helps address one of the biggest pieces of feedback you have. Please let us know what you think!
Thank you, just tested it on version 90.0.816.0 and works fine,
Can you make it even better by applying these please?
- (this was requested by other people too) show open/save/save as by default, Don't hide any of them under a (...) button. there are plenty of space there to show those 3 buttons side by side. I use Save function 95% of the times, so i have to click on the (...) button every time, this can easily be prevented if you showed those 3 options by default. I'm not saying to replace "save as" with "save" because someone else might be using "save as" more often. but if you show all 3 options in there, everyone will be happy.
- when there are multiple downloads pending (e.g. 2>), then show extra options for "Save all", "Cancel all" and "Save all as".
these are important and will help the experience to become better.
- Those open/save/save as could show only when hovering over it too.
Hi folks,
Just a reminder to keep your responses civil and on topic. Please review the community code of conduct if you have any questions.
Thanks!
-Alex
- Why was my reply removed? It was informative, my opinion, and I was not the one arguing with those 2. Yet, you left the bad comments above mine and yours, strange.
- Looks like I missed a few comments above that were not part of the off-topic fork, just cleaned those as well. If your reply was in response to the off-topic fork of this conversation, it was removed along with the parent and all replies associated to it.
I really love this design , I have some feedbacks here:
1) I really missed the shield icon in Microsoft Edge, as we all know all downloads will be checked by SmartScreen filter and I hope it show icon like it has been checked and it is safe like a green shield.
2) Sometimes we have a case like we download a file and then manually deleted it and current behavior is like
file deletedwhen click on it. It would be nice like we have a button when click on it, it check for existence of all files and if any file missing automatically show it has been deleted. Right now user must click on it to see if it has been deleted or moved. Then another option like to remove all deleted downloads from the list instead of remove them one by one. Currently, user think like download a file and when click on it, it is not there and it is a bit negative experience.Congrats! Overall, I see this as an improvement.
One drawback to the new window is the following:
I'd like to see a return of one option from the old downloads window that I miss--a one-time option to open with system viewer. The new window has ALWAYS open with system viewer, but not a one off event. I like using Edge to view PDFs within the browser. But with large ones, or files that I spend a lot of time with, I prefer to use my system viewer. So the choice to do it once with system viewer, while still using Edge as my default, would be nice. I attach a screenshot of the old downloads menu, with its option that I would like the new window to have.
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.
William Devereux No drag and drop. So for me is just not good.
I would love to use it and give feedback, but I just hate it without drag and drop.
it looks prettyGreat job! How about allowing the order of the downloads to be prioritised?
Regards
Graham
