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How to Hide the Firefox Downloads Status Window

April 7, 2008 – 8:52 am by gabe

I don’t know about you, but when I download something, I just want to click a link, have the file or application download, then get to it when I’m ready to open the file or launch the application. If I’m downloading a large file, especially, I don’t need to watch the status. I’d rather get back to work on other stuff and I certainly don’t need to see this window:

Hiding this status window is as easy as 1, 2, 3 (4, 5):

1. Open up a new tab in Firefox (control-T, as you might recall from my earlier post on Firefox shortcuts).
2. Type about:config into the address bar and hit Enter.
3. In the Filter field at the top, type download:

   

4. Look for the option called browser.download.manager.showWhenStarting (you can also filter for exactly that phrase).
5. Double-click that option and the value will change to false:

   

That’s it! Next time you download a file, you don’t have to worry about the annoying status box, but you can check on it at any time by pressing control-J to open the window.

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Posted in browser tips, firefox