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Prevent Firefox from showing the downloads window

Posted May 15th, 2009 in Applications

When you download a file by default Firefox will show a downloads window showing the progress and a list of recently downloaded files, and it doesn't automatically go away after the download has finished. This post shows how to either not show the downloads window at all, or allow it to show and then automatically close once the download is complete.

The downloads window

The first screenshot below shows the download window that I'm referring to. On another note, you can (obiously) clear what's currently in the list by clicking the "Clear List" button at the bottom left of the window.

Changing the settings

The next screenshot shows the options window. You get there by clicking Tools then Options from the main file menu on Windows (on Linux I think it might be Edit then Preferences, and on a Mac it'll be the application name and then options or whatever the standard name is for options on apps).

Make sure the "Main" tab is selected at the top and then look for the "downloads" settings, which I've highlighted with a red box in the screenshot.

You can stop the downloads window from showing at all by unchecking the "show the downloads window when downloading a file" or allow it to show by leaving that checked (or checking it if it wasn't) and checking the "close it when all downloads are finished" button for it to automatically close when the download has finished.

Showing the downloads window

If you've changed the options as per the above instructions and the downloads window doesn't show, or closes when the download has completed, or you've closed the window after looking at it, you can show the window again at any time. Select Tools and then Downloads from the main file menu, or use the Ctrl+J keyboard shortcut combination and the window will display.

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