Finally, Microsoft is addressing Chromium Edge‘s download management problem by bringing a flyout menu similar to Favorites, History, and Collections. Edge’s new downloads menu bids goodbye to downloading tray that appears at the bottom when you begin a download.
Issues with Edge’s current download manager
- When you start a download, the download tray appears at the bottom, it occupies useful space
- If you close it, tracking the progress of downloads is difficult
- If you visit the Edge downloads page, getting back to the downloads bar is not easy.
Edge team is addressing the above issues with a new menu,
- that appears in the top right corner
- lets you monitor the progress of downloads right from the toolbar
- You can dismiss it and can still see the download through the new process ring on the download button
- You can pin the downloads menu open and can view the details of the download as you work
- offers pause or cancel options for each download when you right-click.
- You can open the menu whenever you want and glance at all downloads by pressing the “Ctrl+J” shortcut.
- If you’re a Firefox user, you’ll find the downloads experience similar or almost the same, in Edge as well.
The feature is currently available to select users via CFR in Edge 89 Dev and Edge 90 Canary versions.
To see it, you need to ensure the following settings enabled in Edge.
Enable the new downloads menu in Microsoft Edge
- Launch Edge browser
- Click on the three-dot menu, select Settings
- Select Downloads
- Turn on “Show downloads menu when a download starts”
- And, visit Appearance, and enable the “Show downloads button”
Due to controlled rollout, the feature may not be available to you. If you’re not seeing the above settings mentioned in 4 and 5, try running Edge by adding the below switch at the end of Target after giving space and follow the last two steps.
--enable-features=msDownloadsHub
To disable Edge’s downloads menu or to get back to the old downloads tray
- Follow the steps from 1 to 3 and turn off the “Show downloads menu when a download Starts” setting.
- After this whenever you begin a download, the download appears at the bottom in tray-like before.
Note: Running Edge with --disable-features=msDownloadsHub turns off the downloads menu and related settings, but the flag may not work for long.
So turning off the show downloads menu setting when available could be the right thing to do going forward.
What’s your take on Edge’s new download flyout? Let us know in the comments below
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