The Disappearing Downloads
For over a decade, Google Chrome displayed active and completed downloads in a persistent bar at the very bottom of the browser window. You had to manually click the ‘X’ to close it. Recently, Google overhauled this UI, moving downloads to a small “bubble” icon next to the address bar. By default, this bubble pops open when a download starts, but it automatically closes itself after a few seconds, even if the download is still running or just finished. If you are accustomed to using the bottom bar as a visual ‘to-do list’ of files you need to open, this automatic hiding makes it very easy to forget you downloaded something.
Restoring the Persistent Bar
To keep your downloaded files clearly visible and stop Google Chrome from automatically closing the new downloads bubble (or to restore the old bottom bar), you must tweak the browser’s hidden experimental flags.
Because Google removed the old bottom bar in recent updates, you cannot fix this in the standard settings menu. You must access the Chrome Flags. Open a new tab, type chrome://flags in the address bar, and press Enter. In the search box at the top of the Flags page, type download bubble. You will likely see two options: “Enable download bubble” and “Enable download bubble V2.” Click the dropdown menu next to both of these and change them from “Default” to Disabled. A prompt will appear at the bottom of the screen asking you to Relaunch Chrome. Click it. When Chrome restarts, the classic, persistent download bar at the bottom of the screen will be restored, and it will never close until you explicitly command it to.