Announcing the Open/Save as/Save and Delete prompts for downloads!

[i-am-kent]

Update: Open/SaveAs is now available on Edge Stable ( version >= 86.0.622.38)

Greetings, Microsoft Edge Insiders! 

As a part of our top feedback, we have been looking at implementing features from Microsoft Edge legacy. One of those items is a feature asking users if they want to Open, Save As, Save, or Cancel a download. This week, we're excited to announce that this setting is now available in our Dev and Canary channels! We expect all builds with version >= 87.0.629.0 to have this feature.

To enable it, navigate to edge://settings/downloads and toggle on, "Ask me what to do with each download." Once you download a file after enabling that setting, you will see options to: 

• Open the file, which downloads it to a temporary folder and opens the file. This temporary folder will attempt to clear itself whenever you start a new browser session 
• Save as, which opens the file explorer, allowing you to rename and choose where the file is saved 
• Save the file, located under the ... button, which saves the file to your default downloads folder (you can also change this on the Downloads settings page) 
• Cancel the file download entirely, this is also located under the ... button 

Another feature we're adding is the ability to delete downloads directly from the browser itself. If you head to the Downloads page, you can now right-click on a downloaded item (or the ... menu for the item in the download shelf/bar) and select "Delete file." Once you do this, the file will be deleted from your computer. We hope that this will help users who like to download files automatically while still keeping their downloads folder clean. 

We encourage you to give these changes a try! Have a suggestion on how to improve these new download features? Navigate to the browser's ... menu > Help and feedback > Send feedback to let us know your thoughts. 

- The Microsoft Edge Product Team 

[#2]

@i-am-kent 

Thank you for the addition.

[#3]

Thank you Edge team. It's really a great addition

[#4]

Thank you @i-am-kent 

They are very helpful features.

I need to add, it would be nice if you add features to automatically remove deleted items.

So let say I download something and then I manually go to the folder and remove it, it still remains under downloads and when I click on it (it shows removed). Expected result would like when user remove it from the folder , then it automatically marked as removed without user clicking on it.

It would be nice to add special icon when file scanned with SmartScreen filter like shield icon indicating it has been scanned and is safe or for some reason scanned failed in addition to add information.

In addition, it would be nice to have Report unsafe or Safe download from this menu too.

[#5]

@i-am-kent 

Would appreciate an option between the two like the old prompt where to save we had before. Prompting what to do every time and not prompting at all seem like two extremes. When we had the option originally to just specify where to save using the standards windows save dialog, which seems like a middle ground.

Anyone's workflow that involves downloading a lot of stuff to different directories will be impacted by the removal of the just prompt to save. Either having to click the link, then move to the bottom of the window and find the download button, then click the save as or download everything to a set directory and sort them out later. Seems like a bad UX design. 

I'm not against adding additional ways to solve the original issue, but the complete removal of the old way.

[#6]

@i-am-kent 

Thanks for implementing this feature. Loved it for opening PDF and other document files temporarily. However, there is one thing that I would like to see changed about it. Whenever, you click "Save As" the file explorer now always opens to the default download path (usually C:\User\Downloads). I find this a bit annoying since there are times where I have a bunch of separate files I want to download that I want to put in a different folder (eg. folder on the Desktop). That means that every time I click "Save As", I have to navigate to that Desktop folder, which is a pain. I would have preferred the old way of how downloads were handled - meaning the "Save As" button opens to the last folder that you saved a download in.  

So the workflow would be: Download a file -> click "Save As" -> File Explorer opens to "Downloads" -> I navigate to my folder on the Desktop -> Save the file in that folder -> I download another file -> Click "Save As" -> File Explorer opens to THE FOLDER ON THE DESKTOP -> I save the file on that Desktop folder

If you guys could modify the behaviour to this (or let the user choose the behaviour), that'd be great.

[#7]

@i-am-kent

As well as also wanting to have the option of the previous behaviour, the other thing I'd need before considering Edge a usable browser for me WRT Downloading is some additional information on the download on the shelf while the download is happening. Specifically I need it to show the download speed alongside the  'x of y' progress. Especially on a big download, seeing the download speed has slowed or gone to zero is often the quickest way to see something has gone wrong with the download.

[#8]

@i-am-kent At last some improvement over the dreadful bog-standard chrome downloader. I find with cent browser, a useful option for when, say, you download a podcast is that it can save THEN OPEN the mp3. I guess resumable downloads at some stage would be nice too.

[#9]

@i-am-kent I've been enjoying the Canary build of Edge for a while now and this is the first major change that I absolutely hate.  I have to download lots of files to different locations and prefer the option to always prompt to Save As and to default to the last folder saved to.  With this option, I now have to click the link, click Save As on the bottom bar, then navigate to the folder I want to save to each time.  Best case scenario (with a pinned folder), I now have to go through 4 clicks instead of 2 in order to save a file to the last folder I was saving to.

[#10]

@i-am-kent  This is a very annoying feature as it adds an additional click to save a file to folder, very annoying for when I when to download multiple spreadsheets to different folder locations. Also I am not able to save as .csv files anymore for some reason.

[#11]

thnks for the updates 

[#12]

@i-am-kent

This is the way to go. It's all about options. Great work on the features by the way!

[#13]

@i-am-kent 

With the introduction of this feature, the Save As no longer remembers the last save location. That's probably a bug but it makes this feature very annoying. 

Even if the last location was still used when I select Save As, you've basically added an extra click to get there and I'm not sure what you've actually enabled here. Before this "feature" I could cancel the download when the save to dialog showed up. I could open the file from the bar below by just clicking on it. Am I missing something here?

Please add a way to turn this off and use the current behavior. 

A much more useful feature would be the option for downloads from different sites to remember their own save locations or make the list of last save locations consistent and correct. Features that might save time for people instead of making basic tasks harder

[#14]

@i-am-kent The ability to delete right from the download bar is an awesome addition.  

[#15]

@i-am-kent 

I find it intensely annoying that the "Save as" button does not default to the location previously used to save a document.

[#16]

it should look like in legacy edge or IE, not like this chrome-themed subproduct!
why you leaving so many space in that useless line? why not remove it? just name of the file and option, leave all other space to sites, not the white/gray bar!

[#17]

yes, in that place whould be 'save' and 'save as' as an option.

[#18]

@i-am-kent 

Thanks for the team's work on this, but I have to agree with the other poster this has just slowed down my workflow a lot!

Expected behavior: With the "always ask me where to save.." option when I download something I am prompted with a Windows Explorer window to select the download location. I also have a one click option to save in default location (remembered per website).

Actual behavior: Takes an extra unnecessary button click to download the file and an extra unnecessary click to save the file to default location.

This is especially annoying when saving multiple files from websites that I want to rename before saving.

I agree with @Reverend EvvL X, @azuravian, @acho90 , @IshaiH  Please consider reverting to the previous popup or having an extra option "bypass extra download prompt before showing save as window"

Created an account to post this because this is the first major change that is annoying enough that I would switch back to Chrome if it's not reverted.

Thank you.

[#19]

@i-am-kent 

Right now if I have to save a lot of files from a site (like University Canvas) each time I pick Save As it resets the folder to the default save folder instead of the last used folder; this results in a lot of movement through the file manager to get to the specific folder for each and every file.

As a work around I am changing the default save folder to the specific folder I want to download multiple files to and then changing it back.

[#20]

@i-am-kent unfortunately, you totally killed remembering the last save folder. Let's say I want to save five files into the non-default folder. If I click Save as, I get the 'save' dialog with the default folder. If I click Save, I save to the default folder automatically.

What you could have done is:

Save - default folder

Save as - last saved folder

As for now, I had to turn off the download prompts, as they provide very little benefit. Instead, they slow down downloading small files that get completely downloaded even before you click anything.