How To Find Downloads On Mac

How To Find Downloads On Mac Computer
Imac Downloads To Desktop
How To Find Downloads On Mac Book Air

Pause a download: Click the Stop button to the right of the filename in the downloads list. To resume, click the Resume button. Find a downloaded item on your Mac: Click the magnifying glass next to the filename in the downloads list. If you move a file or change the download location after downloading it, Safari can’t find the file. This video will help you find your 'Downloads' folder on your Mac so that you can find our setup file and start the installation of WORDsearch 11.

I’ve seen a lot of cluttered and disorganized Downloads folders on Mac. A lot. For me, at least, it’s much easier to keep my downloaded files cleaned up and organized if I download to my Desktop which I’m constantly looking at then to download to the downloads folder which I don’t pay attention to until it gets too cluttered to find anything.

So if you’re the same way, it’s good to know that you can change where Safari, Firefox, and Chrome automatically put their downloads.

So for today’s article, let’s go over how to change the default download folder on the Mac!

Luckily, the process of changing the default download directory pretty similar in the three main Mac browsers.

Change the Default Download Location in Safari

Open the Safari app and click on the Safari drop-down menu at the top left.
Choose Preferences.
Make sure General tab is selected and then change the File Download Location to wherever you want.

As you can see, I’ve got mine set to “Desktop,” but you can pick an alternate location with that “Other” choice. Clicking “Other” will bring you to the familiar macOS open/save dialog box, from which you can select any folder you want to use.
If you’re feeling really fancy, you could instead change that toggle shown in my second screenshot above to “Ask for each download,” which will mean that you can file away everything you download exactly where you want it to go, every time. While this is a nifty feature but it can get cumbersome to have to choose a download location for each and every download you do.

Change the Default Download Location in Firefox

With the Firefox browser, you’ll start the same way as you did with Safari.

Launch Firefox and click on its named menu(i.e. the FireFox pulldown menu) in the upper lefthand corner.
Select Preferences.
Under the General tab, at the label: Save files to click choose and select the folder you want your downloads to go to.

Again, the “Always ask me where to save files” radio button you see above will make Firefox ask you each time you initiate a download.

Change the Default Download Location in Chrome

Google made it just a teeny bit harder to change your default downloads folder in the Chrome browser, but the steps begin the same way as the other two browsers.

Launch Chrome and select the Chrome menu from the top of your screen.
Select Preferences.
Scroll down the settings on the side menu until you see Advanced. Click on it.
Choose Downloads.
Click on Change next to Location and select the folder you want your downloads to go to.

As with Safari and Firefox, there’s a choice to make the browser ask you where to put the file you’re downloading every time.
As Steve Jobs used to say, “Oh yeah, there’s one more thing.”

Mail also uses the Downloads folder to store attachments you save, so if you’d like to be really thorough, you could change that, too.

Click on the Mail pulldown menu at the top of Mail then select Preferences. Next, under the General tab, you can change the download location just as you can with the web browsers:
So now that you’ve got all of your browsers (and Mail!) set to do exactly what you need them to, you can go forward knowing that your Downloads folder will never get too cluttered and disorganized again. Getting things done is so much easier when you stay organized.