Introducing the new downloads experience

[William Devereux]

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  

[#2]

Love this new downloads flyout, more than the download bar that appeared at the bottom.

just one thing that many other people also asked,

Remember the Pinned state of these new flyouts. when we Pin the downloads/favorites/collection/history flyouts, it should be remembered by Edge, so that the next time we open them, we don't have to Pin them again.

Also please show Save and Save as options by default on each download, don't hide one of them under a (...) button.

thank you

[#3]

@HotCakeX I still don't agree with the pinned thing.

[#4]

@William Devereux I hope that the size of the downloaded file can be displayed after the download task is completed. In addition, I hope that a button can be added to delete the download task and make it disappear completely. Thank you.

[#5]

This looks like a straight copy from Firefox.

[#6]

Thank you, this one was one of my top requested feature for edge.

[#7]

@William Devereux 

While some may prefer this new downloads menu, the inability to drag downloaded files directly from the menu to other locations and applications has made working with downloaded files very cumbersome after the removal of the bottom download tray. Further, not being able to see a list of recently downloaded files without sacrificing screen space by pinning the downloads menu to the side of the window defeats the stated purpose of its implementation of clearing up screen real estate (attached is an example of the lost screen space due to this).

My suggestion: Allow files to be dragged to other locations & applications from the new downloads menu and/or provide an option to use the previous download tray at the bottom of the window as it was.

[#8]

@William DevereuxI really like this new manager, but I've noticed that you can pinch to zoom with the trackpad or touch in these new UI elements (such as Downloads, Collections, Favourites, and History) which looks very unnatural and doesn't feel right. Hopefully the ability to zoom within these new parts of the UI can be disabled?

[#9]

@William Devereux 

This new download feature used to work for me but it has now changed back to the old method and I cannot see a way to change this. I am running the latest Dev build. Is there a setting I need to change?

[#10]

@ElectroRich 

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@ElectroRich wrote:

@William Devereux 

This new download feature used to work for me but it has now changed back to the old method and I cannot see a way to change this. I am running the latest Dev build. Is there a setting I need to change?

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It's currently controlled feature rollout, not available to everyone and not available to all regions.

just wait it out or if you really want it,

add this to the end of the target of your Edge shortcut:

--enable-features=msDownloadsHub

[#11]

@William Devereux Is it possible to go back to the old experience? With this new experience I cannot drag files into applications for easy upload.

[#12]

@andrelegendre 

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@andrelegendre wrote:

@William Devereux Is it possible to go back to the old experience? With this new experience I cannot drag files into applications for easy upload.

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Why not add drag and drop to the new flyout instead of going back to the old design?

I love the new design and the way I see it, adding drag and drop feature will solve your problem.

[#13]

@HotCakeX  Sure that's an option as well. But I need drag and drop access during my daily tasks. I'm sure it's not something that they can add over night. I too, love the new layot but it's unfortunately it's not practical for me in it's current state :(

[#14]

I was able to disable it by adding this at the end of Edge target

-disable-features=msDownloadsHub

[#15]

I understand, please make sure to submit a feedback about this using feedback button on Edge

[#16]

I hadn't yet noticed that one could pinch zoom in the flyouts. That's solved the issue I would have posted about whereby the text of the speed, amount out of how much etc while a download is ongoing is too small for me to be able to read it. So my vote is NOT to remove the zoom functionality. Have an option to turn it on or off by all means.

[#17]

Haven't received it yet since I'm on stable but I love this feature! I absolutely hated Chrome's way of displaying it at the bottom and can't believe they still have it displayed there. I don't use Chrome anymore but instead Firefox for the past many years, so I'm used to having downloads at the top and I am glad you added it at the top. I'd like to move to Edge in the near future.

[#18]

hope it works as well for edge

[#19]

@William Devereux 

Love to see it! This is an improved version from Firefox; I really like that "Open Folder" is a prominent option. I always need to do some file management with downloads, so I rarely ever open directly.

[#20]

@ikjadoon

Same here!