Get an Improved Chrome Download Notification When File Downloads Finish

Whether you download some pretty hefty sized files in Chrome or just a few tiddlers, while the tell-tale download arrow icon on the toolbar turns green when everything is complete, there is no audio indication. You have to look and go see.

Many other browsers such as Safari will give you an audible indication that a download has finished, but with Chrome all is silent. Some users may prefer this approach but for others waiting for a large download to complete so they can get busy installing it, the lack of audio notification can be a pain in the behind. At the very least a more obvious visual notification is needed here.

There is a the download shelf bar that appears at the bottom of the window, but we don't always pay attention to that when it appears because we're usually all multi-tasking up a storm. A beep, music playing or a stronger visual notification will jog us all out of our multi-attention focus and we can go deal with the completed download at that point.

Download Notifier Extension

Download Notifier Extension is a great way for Chrome to do a little more in this regard. It displays a proper notification when a file completes its download. A useful button can be tapped that will open up a file manager to access the download directly.

The extension will also do a couple of other helpful things. The toolbar button can open up the downloads page within Chrome at chrome://downloads. It also disables the Chrome download shelf or bar indication entirely.

Getting to the Downloads Page

Accessing the downloads page by pressing the toolbar button will deliver a different type of downloads screen. It looks like this Chrome extension was made for the Mac originally as there is an action button which reads: Reveal in Finder which is the Mac file manager. In any case, this button will open up the file manager within your version of Windows too.

This extension does need to be running at all times and will sit in the toolbar. It is only about 15 kilobytes in size (uses about 18 kilobytes RAM on my machine) but when other extensions are also running alongside Chrome it can start to slow a PC down. So we suggest balancing out what extensions you install into Chrome to get the best extra features while maintaining speed and usability at the same time.

The extension is a free download in the Google Web Store for Windows, Mac, Linux and Chrome OS too.