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.
Thanks for the thoughtful replies everyone. I am the PM for downloads who wrote the copy for Elliot Kirk 's post on this thread.
It seems that (1) and (2) resonated most with people so far. With (3), I am speaking specifically about the current download experience, where all you need to do is click the link and the download starts.
Spartan's model requires an additional user interaction (clicking on Run/Save/Save as).
Is there any concern that if we adopt Spartan's model, there is an additional barrier to access your downloads? Instead of 1 click, it requires 2 clicks for each download to be saved to your computer if we take Spartan's Run/Save/Save as modal for each download.
i-am-kent, to your follow-up question on balancing speed (1-click) with power-flexibility that requires multiple clicks, for my part, I'd be fine if left click did a jump to a "default" behavior that could be set in settings (I'd set to pop-up a save dialog to prompt me where to save, but this would allow others to have it save immediately with a single click), and right-click provided an menu with the full list of options.
To make this as easy as possible for users to optimize, I'd suggest that initially when a user clicks on a file link, it provides a pop-up window showing the options:
- Save to default download location
- Save as... to specify save location
- Open/Run
And then let user select one as a default, where all remain available via right-click.