The Distracting Animation
Google Chrome recently fundamentally changed how it handles file downloads. Instead of the classic “Download Shelf”—a solid bar that appeared at the very bottom of the browser window—Chrome now uses a “Download Bubble.” Whenever you initiate a download, a small icon in the top right corner of the toolbar (near your extensions) animates, pops open a small bubble showing progress, and then hides itself. While this saves vertical screen space, many power users despise the bubble. The animation is distracting, and the bubble completely disappears when you click away, forcing you to manually click the icon again just to check the status of a slow, gigabyte-sized download.
Restoring the Classic Shelf
To eliminate the distracting top-right animation and disable the Download Bubble completely in Google Chrome, restoring the classic bottom download shelf, you must modify the browser’s hidden experimental flags.
Open a new tab in your Google Chrome browser. Click into the address bar, type exactly chrome://flags, and hit Enter. This will load the internal experiments page. At the top of this page is a search bar. Type Download Bubble into the search field. The list will filter to show flags related to this feature. Look for the primary flag explicitly named Enable download bubble. Click the dropdown menu located to the right of this flag (which will be set to “Default”) and change the setting to Disabled. You may also see a flag named Enable download bubble V2; ensure this is also set to Disabled. A blue Relaunch button will appear at the bottom right. Click it to restart Chrome. The next time you download a file, the classic, permanent shelf will appear at the bottom of the window.