1738372 - Want to be able to disable the download panel opening for each download

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: Downloads Panel, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Jan Alexander Steffens [:heftig]]

In the current Nightly, the download panel opens after I confirm the Save-As dialog and has to be dismissed, which annoys me greatly.

I often download multiple small files from multiple open tabs with a series of clicks and key presses and this change has disrupted my workflow.

Firefox Nightly, GNOME Wayland, Arch Linux.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

Set release status flags based on info from the regressing bug 1732347

Comment 2

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Jan Alexander Steffens [:heftig] from comment #0)

I often download multiple small files from multiple open tabs with a series of clicks and key presses and this change has disrupted my workflow.

Can you elaborate on this workflow? Do you just never open the downloads panel and use the file manager to interact with the downloaded files? Do you have them set up to open automatically? Or something else?

Comment 3

[Jan Alexander Steffens [:heftig]]

(In reply to :Gijs (he/him) from comment #2)

Can you elaborate on this workflow? Do you just never open the downloads panel and use the file manager to interact with the downloaded files? Do you have them set up to open automatically? Or something else?

I'm archiving copies of stuff that I already looked at in the tab (e.g. emails, email attachments, bank statements, open PDF files), so I almost never need to interact with the files after saving.

Downloads are mostly done via "Save Page As" (Ctrl-S) or "Save Link As" (right click, press K) or but are sometimes triggered by clicking a link or button in the page. The pre-selected folder is often already the right one, so the dialog gets immediately confirmed via Enter and then the tab is closed via Ctrl-W.

Downloads are set to always ask where to save. I only use the default "Downloads" folder for files I don't want to keep.

Comment 5

[Molly Howell (she/her) (no longer active)]

Attachment: Bug 1738372 - Add a pref to control whether the downloads panel opens on every new download. r=Gijs

Comment 6

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/50ad5f64e5ba
Add a pref to control whether the downloads panel opens on every new download. r=Gijs

Comment 7

[Marian-Vasile Laza]

Backed out changeset 50ad5f64e5ba (Bug 1738372) for causing bc failures on browser_downloads_panel_opens.js.
Backout link
Push with failures
Failure Log

Comment 8

[Molly Howell (she/her) (no longer active)]

What happened here is that I messed up the lazy pref getter so that it would not update its value if the pref changed during the session, meaning the test's attempt to change the pref did not get through. Not hard to fix, once you know to watch for it.

Comment 9

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/a6342e8bac71
Add a pref to control whether the downloads panel opens on every new download. r=Gijs

Comment 10

[Alexandru Michis [:malexandru]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/a6342e8bac71

Comment 11

[Adrian Florinescu [:aflorinescu]]

Let's verify the functionality of the new preference as well:

browser.download.alwaysOpenPanel - true (default)

Comment 12

[Petruta Horea [:phorea], Desktop QA]

Verified using latest Nightly 96.0a1 across OS's that when the pref browser.download.alwaysOpenPanel is set to False, the Download Panel no longer opens, no matter if the files are downloaded to the default folder or if the Always ask you where to save files field is checked.

Comment 13

[Jan Alexander Steffens [:heftig]]

Thanks for this. FTR, I think opening the "downloads panel" wouldn't be so disruptive if it was a (Chrome-like) toolbar instead of a (modal) popup.

Comment 14

[TBZ]

browser.download.alwaysOpenPanel default should be false from 98.0 onward, please.

Comment 16

[pittos]

How stupid! This is a very painful and annoying visual cue.

If you're a browser with such a small market share, you don't go messing with something like this unless you really want your market share to drop even further.

Any time Firefox adds anti-features and treats people like children like this, there needs to be a one-time prompt asking to enable the behaviour, not enable by default, and there also needs to be a control panel switch before the option is enabled.