Forum Discussion
Provide run / open / save / save as options when downloading files - Discussion
Hello everyone,
Thanks so much for all the feedback provided regarding Open/SaveAs. We are now introducing an option for users using Edge version 87.0.629.0 and above to choose, for each download, whether they want to Open, Save As, Save, or Cancel a download. To enable this option, navigate to edge://settings/downloads and enable, "Ask me what to do with each download." Once you download a file after enabling that setting, you will have the option to Open, Save As, Save, or Cancel it. If you choose to open it directly, it will be downloaded to a temporary folder.
Additionally, we have exposed an option to directly delete downloaded files from your computer, in the browser so that you can easily clean up after downloading your files without leaving the browser.
To learn more about these features, please check out our post.
From your original list, #2 (being able to provide a ‘save as’ filename) is:
- ... necessary for many sites.
- Example:
At tax time each year, I download PDFs of all of my banking and credit card statements. Many providers don’t provide useful (or unique) filenames, so one ends up with statement.pdf as well as statement(1).pdf through statement(11).pdf. Even if they do put the date in the file name, they still need to be filed in a sub folder for our purposes.
- Example:
- ... useful for IT downloads.
- Example:
Often times, a software download is just called ‘setup.exe’ or ‘program-name.zip’.
In IE and (classic) Edge, I could ‘save as’ and add the software version number and/or other information to the filename so I would know what was what when sorting my downloads hours or weeks later (e.g. 'program-name_v4.24a.zip').
- Example:
Related:
- Perhaps the “Open/Save/Save As” pop up could auto-dismiss after a time
- (e.g. after the download is complete, wait until the user is not idle in that window to insure they have seen it, then after 30 seconds of user inactivity, slowly fade the notification away.)
- If no action was taken by the user, retain the file in the Downloads folder, allowing the user to download multiple files without _requiring_ extra clicks for file management.
- In this case, preserve the “Open/Save/Save As” function in the downloads window to show that the file has not yet been acted upon. Once acted upon (or if the file is detected to have been moved / renamed / deleted outside of edge, make that disappear (but perhaps retain it in a pop-up or contextual menu in the downloads window).
- (e.g. after the download is complete, wait until the user is not idle in that window to insure they have seen it, then after 30 seconds of user inactivity, slowly fade the notification away.)
P.S. Thanks to you and all the PMs on your team for listening and being so responsive to user comments.
- (I’m sure all the “bring back Edge feature x” comments are frustrating, but getting this all right the first time will probably be a big part of how successful the future forced roll-out of Edge will be!)
- It must be especially difficult, since as the default browser in Windows, Edge will be expected to both meet a higher standard overall and to be more functional out straight of the box (with the default settings) than a browser separately downloaded by a user (which would presumably be more likely to be customized by that user).
JimGrisham, you wrote:
Perhaps the “Open/Save/Save As” pop up could auto-dismiss after a time
- (e.g. after the download is complete, wait until the user is not idle in that window to insure they have seen it, then after 30 seconds of user inactivity, slowly fade the notification away.)
- If no action was taken by the user, retain the file in the Downloads folder, allowing the user to download multiple files without _requiring_ extra clicks for file management.
- In this case, preserve the “Open/Save/Save As” function in the downloads window to show that the file has not yet been acted upon. Once acted upon (or if the file is detected to have been moved / renamed / deleted outside of edge, make that disappear (but perhaps retain it in a pop-up or contextual menu in the downloads window).
That's not the point of our need for Open and Run options. It's not to save a click. It's to avoid navigating to the file after downloading it to run it, act on it, and especially to have to delete it after downloading, because Open and Run should not leave a copy on the computer when finished. That generally means we need the ability to select to Open or Run BEFORE it downloads (though I would admit some clever file handling after the fact could achieve the same thing).
- (e.g. after the download is complete, wait until the user is not idle in that window to insure they have seen it, then after 30 seconds of user inactivity, slowly fade the notification away.)
