Chrome automatically downloads files instead of opening

Asked 6 years, 6 months ago. Active 1 year, 9 months ago. Viewed 65k times. Improve this question. Enilorac Enilorac 1, 5 5 gold badges 19 19 silver badges 43 43 bronze badges. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. DSpencer 3 3 3 bronze badges.

Jim Stitzel Jim Stitzel 36 1 1 bronze badge. Naveen Naveen 1, 8 8 silver badges 12 12 bronze badges. On top of that, regular file types such as. In case you want to open your downloaded files manually, you need to know where Google Chrome is storing them. However, this might not be the case for you. This is how you can check where your files are stored to and change the destination folder in a few simple steps:. Likewise, you can also stop Chrome from opening your downloads automatically. There are several ways to prevent Google Chrome from launching a file in its default program once it finishes downloading to your PC or Mac.

You can either reconfigure the browser to stop it from launching a certain file type, clear all auto-open download preferences, or use Guest mode to override profile-specific download settings. Let's check them out. Chrome's download shelf lets you automatically launch files by type as soon as they've finished downloading locally. You can do that for almost all file formats out there; exceptions include executables for security reasons and PDFs which have their own separate set of auto-open preferences.

If you want to stop the browser from launching a certain file type in its default program automatically, you must access the download shelf settings during a file download and re-configure your preferences for that particular file format.

Step 2: Once the file shows up on the download shelf, quickly click the tiny arrow next to the downloading file. Act quick before the download finishes—otherwise, it will open automatically and hide the download shelf.

And voila! The best solution is to know what you're clicking on and making sure you have an anti-virus installed that will scan each downloaded file.

Oct 15, -. Nov 16, -. That doesn't work because I can't download the file. It opens every time. Nov 17, -. What opens? If you are unable to download the file nothing should open. Nov 21, -. Mar 29, -. To download when you click instead of opening a link, just hold Alt when you left click. Apr 15, -. The file opens. If you click a. Wav file anywhere, it will open in the browser player instead of downloading, and you have no option to prevent it from doing so, meaning that the right-click menu which would allow you to choose it to download it or open it in the future is not showing.

What browser and version are you using? Are you trying to download a custom project or a video background? May 18, -. Peter Maguire. Holy cow! That was exactly what I needed. Files downloading instead of opening in Chrome. This is the way Chrome handles file downloads. Google decided that rather than allowing applications to automatically open files downloaded through Chrome, the files must be downloaded to your local machine.

Download excel instead of open from server.