Forum Discussion
Provide run / open / save / save as options when downloading files - Discussion
Hello everyone and thanks for your significant interest in our feedback item of “Provide run / open / save as options when downloading files”. This has been a very interesting problem to think through. The downloads team would love your thoughts on whether we have identified the main customer needs such a feature would need to address.
We believe that there are three main things being asked for:
- You would like a way to open a file without having to keep it on your computer so that your downloads folder remains “clean” (eg. You want to view your bank statement, but want it deleted after you are finished looking at it)
- You would like a way to choose the filename and location to save the downloaded file so that you can better organize your downloads (eg. You download a family photo IMG_1502.jpg and want to rename it to Reunion2019.jpg and save it in your Photos folder)
- You still want a light-weight downloads process that does not require many clicks (eg. User wants to download multiple photos in succession and move them in bulk afterwards without having to click “Save” each time). This is what our downloads flow currently addresses; one click to download.
- You would like a way to easily switch between (1), (2), and (3) for different files you are downloading; one size does not fit all (eg. For bank statements, you want to just open it, and have it deleted afterwards. But for family photos, you want to be able to rename and save to a specific location).
Do you think we are thinking in the right direction? We are still exploring possible solutions to this problem and any additional feedback is most welcome!
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.
216 Replies
I would like to see if the downloads UI when the downloads occur to be in the style of IE and Microsoft Edge with a new design to match with the UI of Microsoft Edge Chromium as it would help users of these browsers to switch with ease.
- Absolutely right. Firefox has this, the "old" Edge had this, and so did Internet Explorer. This is absolutely essential for me and probably the main reason that prevents me from making Edge (Edgium) my main browser. Please implement it!
- Yeah, same here. In the moment chromium will be replacing old edge, I'll stop using Edge at all.
- You can run Edge legacy and Edge stable side by side.
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/discussions/tutorial-how-to-run-legacy-and-chromium-based-edge/m-p/1121216
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.)
- ... necessary for many sites.
4 Months of discussion is really necessary for such a small function ? Wow !
Karsten-S wrote:4 Months of discussion is really necessary for such a small function ? Wow !
Completely 100% agree!
they should have wrapped this topic up 1-2 months ago and already implemented this At least in Edge canary.
Elliot Kirk I would also appreciate Open with... For example, I sometimes want a CSV file to open in Excel as I want to have a table and get sums from it, sometimes it would fit me better to open it in VS Code as I want to copy part of it in a raw form somewhere else... Sometimes I want to throw away the file (Open with), sometimes I want to keep it (Save followed by Open with). Similarly with other file types.
For me, the best for these options is IE
Popup with all information for download (not required to keep a browser window open)
The choice to open, save, etc... the fileIf MS could add these "features" to Edge
Elliot Kirk I would also add two more items:
1. make the download prompt significantly bigger, like it is on legacy Edge, and ideally have a pinnable list of downloads in progress (like legacy Edge)..... the current strip of downloads is much much too small on HiDPI screens - to the level that it is really easy to completely miss that anything is being downloaded!
2. provide more options and an easier interface (maybe consistent with any new download options) for when a file is identified as potentially unsafe as it has not been downloaded enough - as a musician, I find many of the sites with plugins and music related software get picked up as potentially unsafe, and the reporting process does not seem to do anything (at least not yet). having the ability to "trust" a website in terms if reputation (still scanning for viruses, etc.) would be a sensible addition to this process - maybe even feeding this back to MS to go into the whole process of deciding whether or not files on a website, and the website as a whole, are to be marked as untrusted.
Could you please wrap up this topic and talk about your plans based on the feedbacks on this post? it's been more than 3 months now
Elliot Kirk I think you guys nailed identifying the main customer needs. Here's another mockup showing a way it could be done, I think this meets all the needs you presented along with some additional features discussed by others above.
Summary
To minimize clicks like in the current flow (#3), by default files are saved to the Download folder. It preserves the option "Ask where to save each file before downloading", which some users want. If users want to change an individual download's filename or location (#2), they click "Move". If users want a particular file saved in a temporary fashion (#1), they can enable the "Open once" button option and use that button (it's disabled by default to avoid users like this). And since all of these are readily accessible on a file-by-file basis, it also meets (#4).
More useful downloads interface, mockup summary 1
Additional Explanation of Buttons and Options
There isn't space to have all these extra buttons on every download. Therefore, they only appear on one file at a time -- either the most recent download, or if a user has already clicked one of the buttons on the most recent file then it shows the buttons on the second-most-recent file, and so on. For files which are collapsed and showing just the filename and filesize/progress bar, the extra functions can all still be accessed under the "..." menu.
The wording could dynamically change by having the "Move" button be "Save As" while a download is still ongoing, and by having the "Open once" button be "Run once" if a file happens to be an executable (.exe, .msi, etc.). I'd also keep the current behavior where clicking anywhere in the file's download section causes it to open (or to queue up to open if the download hasn't finished yet), but doesn't cause the file to be automatically recycled.
The "Open once" button option is disabled by default to help prevent https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/how-do-i-recover-a-tempstate-download-file/1080856b-80a3-4a85-87fc-9e15b47a65df This is also the reasoning behind the option "Recycle all files in Downloads when closing browser", rather than "Delete all files in Downloads in when closing browser"; this option was suggested by josh_bodner, though the recycling behavior is my idea.
The "Move All" button proposed by WolfIcefang and DinosaurTim lets people quickly click a bunch of pictures to download (for example), then click "Move All" to put all items in the downloads bar into a particular folder.
The Ctrl+Click and Ctrl+Shift+Click keyboard shortcut option is adapted from Wessso's suggestion above.
Per HotCakeX's suggestion above, an option exists to manage choosing how particular filetype downloads are automatically handled https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/change-firefox-behavior-when-open-file#w_changing-download-actions. For each type of file, a user can choose to have it automatically "Preview", "Always Ask", "Save", or "Open With...". https://www.technipages.com/google-chrome-open-pdf-in-adobe-reader, but no other filetypes that I can find.
Per LuKePicci's suggestion, there's a dropdown menu by the "Move" button which is populated with the most recent folder locations.
Per CyanCoding's suggestion here from Apr 2019, the right-click menu gets a "Delete" button and the Cancel becomes "Cancel / Restart" like other browsers which let you attempt to restart a canceled download (I know at least Vivaldi does, I assume other browsers do as well). A "Pause"/"Resume" function would be cool too, but I'm not sure how to put that in the interface elegantly.
Miscellaneous Comments
DinosaurTim argues above that
I think this "Open" button actually needs to die. The reason? Storage Sense. Windows 10's Storage Sense can automatically clean up the Downloads folder of old things we only needed temporarily (like program installers or things to print). The "Open" button of IE caused unneeded confusion, because people wanted to save AND open, and making them choose just confused them.
I disagree because the new Edge is cross-platform. Just because a user happens to be on MacOS or Linux doesn't mean they should lose the ability to open files in a temporary fashion. You also mention the "Open" button causing unneeded confusion; I agree this is bad, and is another reason my mockup uses an "Open once" button which is disabled by default for users who don't understand the difference.
RussTurrentine says above that
...When clicking on a html or htm file that someone has in a documents list on their website, the file just needs to open in the browser in another tab. Why would I want to download that? I just want to view it or print it..
I disagree because that behavior you're describing is defined by MIME types on a website, https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Security/Securing_your_site/Configuring_server_MIME_types for more information. Edge could "guess" what the right behavior is, but that breaks web standards which I think causes more trouble than it's worth. For a vivid example of how the website not the browser controls what happens to files, check out these two links. Both are just hyperlinks to a PDF file, but the websites they're hosted on are configured with different behavior:
- http://www.softerviews.org/Acariya%20Typeface.pdf (and not save to computer)
- http://www.fundacionsgae.org/Lists/FSGAE_SalaPrensa_Recursos/Attachments/1/dummy.pdf
Nukmicah It's important for many enterprises that Group Policies to control these settings are also implemented.
For example we have a web based internal corporate system that require that PDF files in a web portal is opened using Adobe Reader instead of the buildin Edge PDF reader.
So it's important that we via Group Policies can control that PDF files should always be opened (in a temp location) instead of downloaded and that Adobe Reader should open them instead of the buildin reader.- The best solutions are always the simplest ones.
add the Same download options that Edge legacy had to the new Edge.- Yeah.. At this moment when they are planning to replace original edge - at least the things which was in old would be good enough.
- That's good, do it as is and go on with new issues.
- Yeah I also think it's time after all this month to wrap this topic up and post a conclusion of the feedbacks
KristersA
Discuss further... you're kidding, to be sure. This issue is so clear-cut, an obvious no-brainer; doesn't need heaps of talk that hasn't, already, been well stated. Nobody wants to work or function without these standard, expected & required options for downloading (or not).
Cheers,
Drew
