Switching To Mac - Once you go Mac, you never go back

Safari features a dedicated Downloads window which allows you to view your current downloads, stop and restart them as well as perform various operations with your downloaded files. In combination with the Downloads folder on your Mac’s hard drive, Safari allows you to easily control and work with downloaded files from the Internet.

In this tutorial for Safari, we’ll take a look at the features of the Downloads window:

1.) Click on the Safari icon in your Dock to open the web browser:

2.) Navigate to a site from which you wish to download files. In this example, we’ve visited the Games section at popular Mac website MacUpdate:

3.) Choose some files to download. We’re downloading the freeware game Super Tux Kart:

4.) To view the location of your download, press the Magnifying Glass icon next to it’s name:

5.) To stop or pause a download, press the Stop(x) icon:

6.) To restart your downloading, click the Restart(Circular Arrow) icon:

Depending on the server you’re are downloading from, some files may need to start from the beginning again, but the majority will pick up from the point you paused at.

7.) When a file has finished downloading, Ctrl-Clicking (or Right Clicking) on the file name will bring up an options menu:

From here you can choose to open the file, view its location in a Finder window, Copy the Internet address the original file is located at or remove it from the Downloads list.

8.) To remove all items from the Downloads window, click on the Clear button:

9.) You can navigate to your Downloads folder by opening a Finder window, clicking on [your name] and then Downloads:

or clicking on the Downloads stack in your Dock.

10.) You can change your preferred download location and when Safari removes items from your Download list by clicking Safari in the toolbar, then Preferences then selecting the General tab:

11.) Dependent on the file you are downloading, Safari may automatically open it in the appropriate application if it deems it to be “safe”. Safe files include media, such as music, video and images, documents such as PDF and text files and disk images and can be set on or off in the Safari Preferences:

12.) If an installer is present on a downloaded disk image, Safari will automatically open it:

Working with downloads in Safari is relatively simple, but the Mac web browser also gives you a fair amount of control “under the hood”. The ability to automatically open installers and other files with the appropriate application is a particular timesaver when working with large numbers of downloaded files.