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Whenever I download a .dmg, .exe file, etc. Google Chrome assumes I don't know what I am doing and asks me if I understand the risks and warns me that the file may be harmful to my computer. I get the idea, but I want these prompts to stop. How do I do this?

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9 Answers 9

26

This issue has been brought up a few times, and the answer unfortunately seems to be no. If you know your way around source code, the Chromium project may be of interest. You can hack away at the code and remove the warning.

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  • 21
    Wow. The good old "download the source and fix it yourself" solution. Well, I do it myself too but it is certainly not a solution. Maybe one should go for "fork the project" if the upstream is not willing to fix the problem? Out of the frying pan, into the fire :)
    – Tronic
    Jun 26, 2012 at 19:57
  • There seems to be a way around this now. Download a well-known program like PuTTY (putty.exe) and you get no warning, the download begins right away in Chrome. Maybe it has to do with traffic or page ranking or some level of trust the site has attained.
    – Matt K
    Aug 8, 2014 at 16:20
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I know this is very counter-intuitive but I just did it and it stopped the exe download warning for me. Enable this option: [Protect you and your device from dangerous sites] Yeah, I know, it doesn't make sense, but enabling it resolved my issue on Chrome v59. I would think the exact opposite would be true but no, this did it.

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  • Wtf... this is the answer. If you go to Settings > Security > Safe Browsing > and enable 'Standard Protection', it won't prompt to 'Keep/Discard' downloads any longer. Yeah, totally counter-intuitive. Thank you, though! Probably never would have figured it out, lol.
    – Ryan Weiss
    Jul 10, 2022 at 2:09
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The solution without turning off security settings is to to go to Under the Hood, in the Download section, click box next to "Ask where to save each file before downloading".

For those of you who don't know where your normal Download folder is or you are like me that you want a folder on your desktop for easy maintenance, create a new folder on Desktop, and I bet you can't guess what I named it, Download.

Then go to a site and do a search for something that has a PDF document or other downloadable file. Download it. The first time you download this type of file, the normal box pops up at bottom of your browser asking to keep or discard, select keep.

After the file is downloaded and the icon appears for that type of file, click on the little arrow to the right and click on it and in the little menu box select always open this type of file.

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  • 5
    yeah, but doesn't this mean that the file gets opened automatically once the download completes?
    – finiteloop
    May 1, 2012 at 3:55
  • +1 Opens the the PDF reader but you can close it with Alt-F4 (since it will be active) which means you don't have to aim for a moving button with your mouse. Aug 26, 2012 at 16:38
  • 2
    Doesn't work for me. Chrome asks me for permission, I click "keep" and my PDF program gets opened immediately.
    – Nowaker
    Nov 18, 2012 at 2:44
  • For those of you who are trying to download multiple files at once, you may want to add permission for whatever site to download multiple files at once without a prompt, otherwise this solution won't help.
    – jmac
    Nov 19, 2013 at 6:12
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There IS a way to stop Chrome (or Chromium) from showing this annoying prompt. You have to exit browser, locate Preferences file of your Chrome profile (~/.config/chromium/Default/Preferences in Linux), find 'download' section that looks like:

"download": {
  "directory_upgrade": true,
  "extensions_to_open": "",
  "prompt_for_download": false
},

and change "extensions_to_open": "", to "extensions_to_open": "pdf", and you won't see that prompt any more :) If there are already other extensions, use a colon to separate pdf from the existing entries (i.e. "foo:bar:pdf"). Then save the configuration file.

Originally found at askubuntu.com, posted by Rinzwind

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  • Interesting answer, but maybe for a different question? I don’t see “PDF” mentioned anywhere in this question. Apr 10, 2013 at 22:33
  • @Scott the answer seems to imply that you can specify any file extension, not just PDF
    – finiteloop
    Apr 11, 2013 at 6:12
  • @Scott, most of the questions about this Chrome security warning are about PDFs, every single one being closed and linking to this thread so I posted it this way. Besides, you can specify any extension, .exe or .dmg as well. Apr 12, 2013 at 6:39
  • 3
    I don't think this proposed solution solves the problem. The use case that triggers this issue for me (and I think most people) is wanting to bulk download PDFs without opening them. Setting extensions_to_open (or equivalently, selecting "Always open files of this type" in the download bar) does circumvent the warning, but pops up a PDF viewer instead. The desire is to get one-click downloads, without a warning and without a viewer.
    – Reece
    Jun 3, 2013 at 16:19
  • 5
    -1 This does not work for me. Setting extension to open will cause pdfs to auto-open but not before the annoying "This type of file can harm your computer. Do you want to keep <name of file> anyways?" warning. The setting above only sets the auto-open (which can eb done in browser without manually editting config files. Auto-open or auto-save, the utterly annoying prompt always appears. I get it google you want to keep users safe, but this is making me consider another browser. Fine make warning the default option, but ALWAYS provide an override (somewhere). Jul 5, 2013 at 17:04
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If you are in an enterprise environment, there is an ADMX template for Group Policy that has a setting to control the warnings.

The description says that it's only for Domain Joined machines, but the templates typically manage the registry, so it may be that this can be tuned on standalone machines, too.

Group Policy Configuration

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1

I know this question is old but I would like to provide the alternative answer here, along with some commentary.

This prompt is the single most annoying thing in all Chromium-based browsers and it is equally effective as a security measure as it would be asking guests at a party whether they will behave themselves before deciding to let them in or not without actually putting in any effort to confirm they are not drunk or carrying any contraband.

The reasons why the prompt is not only useless but poorly designed are as follows:

  1. It does not provide the user with any additional information about the file which would help them to decide what option to pick.

  2. It is redundant, because the operating system will show its own prompt before launching the file and present more information (like publisher and validity of digital signature) that will help the user make a better informed decision.

  3. It is misleading because no, that NVIDIA driver setup download the user initiated from NVIDIA's website cannot really harm their computer.

  4. It is conditioning the user to click through security dialogs without reading, therefore reducing their overall security posture.

  5. It is not actually checking the file contents to make sure it is harmful, so it is basically a scare prompt.

That said, Microsoft realized it is pointless, and in Microsoft Edge it allows configuring the list of domains (and list of extensions for each domain) where it will not show the prompt using Group Policy. You can even fully disable it by using * as the value for both.

Microsoft also got rid of the retarded Chromium download bar at the bottom of the screen, and added a vastly superior download manager UI in Microsoft Edge.

So, my answer to the question is -- no, you cannot disable the keep / discard prompt in Google Chrome, Brave, etc, but you can switch to Microsoft Edge and disable it there.

If you are OK with Microsoft's telemetry and personal data collection (most of which can be disabled with some effort), you can download and install Microsoft Edge for business along with ADMX templates, and then follow the instructions on how to Configure Microsoft Edge policy settings on Windows devices or how to Configure Microsoft Edge policy settings for macOS using a property list, and configure Microsoft Edge policies to your liking.

The policy you want is Disable download file type extension-based warnings for specified file types on domains.

Do note that some of the policies will work only on domain-joined computers, but most will work on standalone workstations too. For people reading superuser.com satisfying the "domain-joined" requirement shouldn't be a problem anyway.

Migration of your browsing data should be easy since Microsoft Edge is based on Chromium, and Google Chrome extensions work in Microsoft Edge as well once you allow installation from Chrome Web Store.

It is sad that the only way to express our disapproval for this "feature" to Google Chrome and Chromium developers is to switch to another browser, but at least now we have that option as well.

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What I do is tell chrome to ask me where I want each file to go. I dont get a warning, but I "will" get the file/save dialog. Just go to customize and control - settings - Advanced settings - Tick "Ask where to save each file before downloading" and tell it where your default download folder is.

I have created a large default folder (C:/Temp/Downloads)with other specialized folders within it.You can use.../documents/download or anywhere you choose. Videos go to the video folder (C:/temp/downloads/videos), utilities go to the utilities folder C:/temp/downloads/utilities),texts got to the text folder and programs stay in the download folder. I have made other types also. If it is set up this way, its a simple thing to determine where a download will go and as a plus it wont tell you that a file has the possibility of being a danger to all life on earth......... lol.

I use this method to pre-sort my downloads so it is easier to find the songs from the videos from the programs from the pictures from the etc. Works for me, especially after a night finding all types of stuff that I want to try or see. Works well to create a special you-tube folder too.

Hope this helps.

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There is a workaround on Ubuntu for people that are really fed up with this problem by now and do not want to recompile the source code on the other hand. The reasoning is quite simple. Perhaps we do not want Chrome to decide which files to automatically open, but we are better able to do it ourselves.

So, just as Uniblab suggests, tell Chrome to download the file, not open the file. This only means pressing Enter once. Use for example $HOME/setup as download folder.

Then (on Linux) have a script in the background that is notified through inotify.

#!/bin/bash

path=$HOME/setup
flags="--format %f"
while true; do
    download=$(inotifywait $flags -e close_write $path)
    file="$path/$download"
    extension="${file##*.}"
    if [ "$extension" != "pdf" ]; then
        continue
    fi
    mime=$(file -b --mime-type "$file")
    if [ "$mime" = "application/pdf" ]; then
        acroread "$file" &
    fi
done

This will automatically open a file if it has MIME type application/pdf, so be careful. You can check for malicious code yourself before you open it using your favorite executable code scanner. To use the script at start-up, edit crontab -e:

@reboot /usr/bin/abovescript

I think this might actually be the proper way to do stuff. It should be the task of a dedicated program (much more complicated then this script) that is allowed to start applications on your computer. Perhaps to allow Chrome to do that is actually a potential security breach.

Of course on Windows you will need to find another tool. On MacOS, you might want to use fswatch which is in homebrew.

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Go to Options / Under the hood / Privacy and uncheck "Enable phishing and malware protection".

And voilà, no warnings anymore.

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  • 7
    Doesn't that also disable other protections? Honest question, I don't know.
    – CarlF
    Jun 23, 2011 at 13:07
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    At least as far as PDFs go, this does nothing to solve the question at hand - PDFs still prompt to be saved or discarded. In fact, it probably does more harm than good by opening your browser session to malware. Aug 18, 2011 at 14:07
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    I strongly recommend against this approach. Not worth the risk just to avoid clicking a button when downloading a file.
    – bradym
    Jun 30, 2012 at 17:18
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    This option is no longer available in Chrome 59.
    – KC Wong
    Jun 19, 2017 at 2:31

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