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Installed the Google Chrome today, everything runs surprisingly good and fast/smooth, no problems at all, except one. When I click to download a file, it only offers to save it, but I want it to be like in IE - when you click to, for example, download a .zip file, it would offer you to OPEN or save it. It's uncomfortable for, for example, torrent files and some others too.

I've dug all around it's settings but there are only so few of them... So the question is - is there any way to enable this functionality? An extension maybe?

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    @Sathya, this question is asking how to choose to open a file rather than save it when downloading a file. The question you linked to is asking how to open an already-saved file to view in Google Chrome. I believe these are therefore different questions.
    – nhinkle
    Dec 15, 2010 at 20:59
  • @nhinkle woops - my bad
    – Sathyajith Bhat ♦
    Dec 15, 2010 at 21:27
  • If it helps at all, you can express your wish about the missing feature on this issue: code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=68200
    – Costin Gușă
    Jan 11, 2015 at 3:31
  • @CostinGușă - I've long since gotten used to the Chrome way.
    – jurchiks
    Jan 12, 2015 at 15:15

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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When you download the file type you want to opened automatically there will be a dropdown arrow next to the file name in the bottom notification bar. Click that arrow and a menu with an option to "Always open files of this type" can be checked. In the future all files of that type will be opened automatically.

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    Now how do I undo this in order to enable the auto download again?
    – Matt
    Apr 16, 2013 at 21:19
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    Google Chrome Settings/Advanced/Downloads Clear Auto-Opening Settings button. But, this will clear ALL the settings. If you have set other file types to open automatically you will have to reconfigure them.
    – Zooks64
    Apr 17, 2013 at 19:46
  • It is important to note that in setting the "always open files of this type" option, the file will get downloaded to your default download directory and then opened. IE & Firefox use windows temp dir. If you are doing this many times for a file of the same name it can clutter your download directory. The windows renaming convention might hit the 100 limit. Not sure if this is a chrome limit or a windows limit. But if this happens, it will go back to always asking where you want to save the file as.
    – Phil_1984_
    May 8, 2015 at 13:49
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In browsers which let you just click Open rather than saving the file, the file still gets saved to your hard drive, you just don't get to choose where. Usually what those browsers do is download to your temp directory and then open it from there. If you would like similar behavior in Chrome, you can set the default downloads folder to be something like Downloads\chrome temp. Then, when you download a file, it will get saved there and you can then click on the button in the download bar to open the file. It will have the exact same effect as how it works in other browsers, only you get to specify where the temp files are downloaded. You can then clean out that folder whenever you feel like it. This is actually in a way more secure than how other browsers do it, because you get to choose when to delete the temp files, rather than it deciding for you.

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If you have chosen to download a file without asking where to save it you can set that file type to auto open when you've downloaded it by clicking the arrow on the download bar which brings up a menu with options, one of which is: Always open files of this type.

Check that and you're good to go.

http://googlechrometutorial.com/images/google-chrome-allways-open.jpg

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  • Zooks64 had already written that... It's not exactly what I had in mind since it means that that specific file type will ALWAYS be opened, not only in that specific download, but I've gotten used to it now; been using Chrome ever since the day I installed it.
    – jurchiks
    May 1, 2012 at 18:41

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