Request to Restore the Download Shelf as an Option
Dalton Western
For the past 15 years of using Chromium based browsers starting with when Google Chrome was initially released, I have enjoyed having the download shelf at the bottom of my screen. As such I have been accustomed to how the download shelf worked, which was itself an evolution of how Internet Explorer handled it. Earlier this year the default behavior with the Chrome 2023 redesign it changed both how the horizontal tab bar and the download location worked to be, in my opinion, worse. The "Download Bubble" does an inferior job of showing the progress of multiple downloads, even though it does simplify the UI. That did not affect me too much until recently as I was able to revert this change with the toggle of a flag.
In the Chromium v119 the flag to disable the download bubble and use the download shelf was removed. Please restore this option as an official option and leave it. I do not care if the default behavior is the new bubble, but leave the shelf for those of us who prefer it. Just have it be an option such as "Legacy Download Shelf" in the downloads option. The bubble is worse for those of us who may download multiple files at the same time as the progress bar on the bubble only shows the progress on ALL downloads, whereas with the shelf at the bottom of the browser you can see each individual file and it’s unique progress. I have seen multiple people complain about this change over the last few months on X (formerly Twitter) and I have directed them how to change this back to the shelf, and The Verge even wrote an article on how to revert this change. This is not even to mention that some of the more elderly citizens who I provide technical support for remotely at work struggle with changes more than the rest of us. It's a minor change, but I have had multiple customers ask where their download went as this default behavior changed to the bubble in the top right corner. It may be small, but it is still a pain point as a quality of life feature was removed in favor of matching how Edge and Firefox handle downloads. Once again, all I am asking is that you leave the shelf as an option for those of us who prefer it.
