How to force a file to finish downloading

Without putting steps in place to force a file to download, some browsers will only display the item rather than download it.

While simply showing the downloadable item such as an image and allowing the customer to download it at their pleasure is fine for some websites, other times it makes sense for the item to be directly downloaded to the visitors computer. In this tutorial we will outline how you can always force a file to download rather than showing it in the visitors browser.

If you are offering a large item, even if this is a pdf it is recommended to force this download. Your visitor may want to read this later on so having it saved to their downloads file can allow them to do this. If your customer has paid money to purchase the download, then forcing the download can ensure that they receive what they have paid for.

While viewing the download within the browser can often work for images, your user may forget to save it prior to exiting. This means that they no longer have a copy of what they purchased. If you wish for all your downloadable content to be automatically saved on your visitors computer complete one of the following options depending on your developer knowledge and website needs :. Encapsulating your downloadable items in a zip file will ensure they are forced to download.

On some occasions, however, you may find SmartScreen overstepping its bounds and blocking you from downloading a file you know to be safe.

I don't recommend turning SmartScreen off completely because it is helpful in preventing you from downloading a malicious file or app, but you can disable it in Microsoft's Edge browser if you want to override its protection and go ahead and download a file it doesn't recognize. You can disable SmartScreen in the Windows Defender Security Center app in total or just for Edge, but for the latter it's faster to do so right within Edge itself, particularly if you are already using Edge.

Here's how to toggle SmartScreen off and on in Edge:. With SmartScreen off, you are on your own about which files to download in Edge, but I would urge you to go back and toggle SmartScreen on when you have finished downloading your file. This markup is easier to understand and is supported by all modern browsers, but may not be supported by all content management systems. If for whatever reason, you cannot add the download attribute in the case that you cannot directly edit the HTML of your web page , you can optionally compress the file using zip, and instruct the user to download the zip file.

You can alternatively explain to the user that they should right click on the link and select download. If you have no other alternatives to force the file to download, you can host it on a file hosting service such as Google Docs.

The most common file types that are affected by this behavior are PDF files and images. The code below will tell the browser to prompt the user to save the file.

This link does not have the download attribute.