This is a rather obscure problem (I’ve seen it happen only once in the past 7+ years Chrome has been on the market), but I figured I’d document the solution in case anyone else came across the same problem.
So this user could download documents. A small animation would point downward to indicate a download was in progress. The downloaded document would appear in the actual Downloads folder. But no download status bar would appear on Chrome itself.
I’m not sure if download status bar is the proper name for it, but I’m talking about this:
It usually appears with the name of your download after your download starts.
So I tried doing a download in an Incognito Window, and that worked fine. So I knew it wasn’t the Chrome installation itself that was the problem. It was a user profile thing. So I cleared out the cache for that user… and then it worked fine.
In case you don’t know how to clear out the cache in Chrome…
Click on the three horizontal lines in Chrome and then select Settings.
Scroll down to and then click on Show advanced settings….
Scroll down to and then click on Clear browsing data….
Under Obliterate the following items from, select the beginning of time.
Check only Cached images and files.
Then click Clear browsing data.
Your download status bar should be working again.
26 responses to “Fixing Chrome download status bar not appearing after a download”
Thank you, that worked!
omggg thank you!!
will this clear all my bookmarks?
No. Your bookmarks will stay.
Thank you – that worked
I think, there is a change in setting. this doesnt work now.
Same here. Mine worked fine this morning, doesn’t now. I hate these automatic “updates” that windows 10 does. They screw something up every time!!!
Doesn’t work. Created an entire different new user and eliminated the default file and created new. Still doesn’t work. this happens randomly and is an issue with work.
Nope, still broken.
Worked perfectly. Thank you!
thank you
I got it working again by going to the burger menu > Settings > Advanced > scroll right to the bottom (Reset and Clean) and hit the first option, ‘Restore Settings to their original defaults’. You won’t lose history or bookmarks, but you will have to re-enable any extensions you have added yourself.
The problem seems to come from the fact that when the downloads bar was showing, at some point you will have right-clicked and selected ‘Always open files of this type’
Neither of these worked for me. I miss my download bar!
Thanks, this worked like a charm for me. Was going to try restore settings to default if this didn’t work, but I did not even have to do that. Great fix!
It’s always nuts when you find one of those obscure posts from several years ago with an arcane fix. “No way will this work” is what I thought when I went to clear my cache. I saved an image to test it and suddenly, yeah, what on earth, there’s my downloads bar again. It’s absolute magic.
My problem is this:
Once I begin a download, it shows the bar at the bottom correctly, yet when I press the “Show all” button, a new window pops up with all my downloads, download history, etc. But when I close that window, the bar doesn’t re-appear at the bottom again. How do I let it reappear at the bottom again?
Can you please email me the answer since I don’t know if I will get an email stating you responded. Thanks! =)
In my chrome it’s not even showing the download status bar…. Plz suggest a sol
It was so frustrating. Thanks so much.
didnt work on chrome, but issue not seen in incognito mode…
Following worked for me
-Go to: chrome://flags/
-Disable “Enable new download backend”
After everything this worked
Thanks!! it worked
Here’s what worked for me to restore my downloads bar in Chrome: Settings>advanced>downloads and then it should have field that says “always open files of this type” and click “clear”
In my case I had to DISABLE “Enable download bubble”
Thanks, Nick! This suggestion ended up being the one that worked for me!
where is the “Enable download bubble”