According to a thread in the Google Chrome Help community, in order to bring back the on-page file download status bar, you’ll need to access a largely unknown feature called Chrome flags — which lets more tech-savvy users explore experimental web browser features that may still be in early stages of development — and find a particular “experiment” that lets you tweak the progress bar’s placement. Here’s what you do:
- Open a new Google Chrome tab.
- Type “chrome://flags” into the address bar and hit Enter.
- In the “Search flags” field, look up “download bubble.”
This should bring up two available experiments labeled “Enable download bubble” and “Enable download bubble V2” respectively. If you’ve never used Chrome flags before, both should be set to “Default.” To move the download bubble back to the bottom of the Chrome browser page, click on the dropdown menu and select Disabled on both experiments. This should produce a notification saying that changes will take effect the next time you open Chrome. Hit the Relaunch button on this alert to confirm the action.
Google Chrome should close and then reboot after clicking the button. To check if the “fix” worked, try downloading a file and see where the download status shows up.
For now, this is a suitable remedy that’ll let you enjoy Chrome’s classic way of showing file downloads on a computer web browser page. Do note, however, that since the solution involves turning off experimental Chrome features, this may stop working at any time without prior notice.