As someone who regularly downloads large files in Chrome (and plenty of small ones over a poor connection, too) I forget to check that a download has completed.
Other browsers, like Safari, pass a notification or make an audible noise. In Chrome I get nothing.
Now, sure: Chrome’s download shelf bar shows up at the bottom of the browser window whenever a download is started, but I often close this out of habit.
Download Notifier is a free Chrome extension that fixes this. It displays a Chrome notification when a file download finishes, along with a button to quickly open it up in my file manager.
Y’know, the sort of features Chrome really should be offering itself.
In addition to serving up desktop notifications the extension does two other things:
- Toolbar button to quickly open the chrome://downloads page
- Disables the Chrome download shelf/bar entirely
That last point may put some of you off.
The wording of the action button in the notification isn’t exactly platform agnostic. “Reveal in Finder” is fine for those using it on a Mac but confusing on Windows, Linux or Chrome OS. “Reveal in File Manager” would work better.
For those of you who like to keep resource usage to a minimum you also want to keep an eye on this one, too. As an extension that sits in the toolbar Download Notifier will be running all the time Chrome is. That little chunk of memory it sits on is small enough (around 10MB or so) but if you run a lot of other add-ons it can add up.
Download Notifier for Chrome
Download Notifier is a free download for Google Chrome and works on Windows, Mac, Linux and Chrome OS.