Twice recently I went to shut down my browser and a dialog box popped up telling me that closing the browser would cancel downloads. The first time it said four downloads would be cancelled, the second time one would be cancelled. In neither case was I aware that anything was downloading since I had not told the browser to download anything so I went ahead and closed it.
I figured they were updates for one program or another but who knows? Is there a built-in app in Windows 8.1, or IE, or FF that runs in the background and will let me know when, and what, something starts downloading, and give me the option of allowing it to continue or cancelling it? If there is nothing built-in, is there such an app available. I checked a bit on the FF add-ons page with no success.
Most web browsers have a downloads window/dialog you can open to show what files are currently being downloaded, their size, and the progress. In firefox, the button looks like a downward-pointing arrow and is just to teh right of the search box in the main toolbar. In both firefox and IE you can hit CTRL + J to open the downloads window.
The only downloads a webbrowser should be doing are ones you have initiated from within that web browser. Updates and app-initiated downloads use the operating system directly, they (generally) don’t go through your web browser (including updates to the browser itself).
What could be happening is that at some time in the recent past, you closed the web browser while files were still downloading, and it’s trying to finish those downloads each time you start it up. If you look in the downloads window, you can delete these unfinished downloads so your browser stops trying to complete them.
You don’t need a special app to tell you when something is being downloaded by your web-browser. They have that feature built-in. If you want to be really paraniod, change your browsers settings so it always asks where you want to save downloads. That way, any time it starts a download, you’ll get a large, obvious prompt in the middle of the screen asking where you want to save the files.
I do have the down-pointing arrow, but it’s from Flash Video Downloader, and add-on. That arrow was the first thing I looked at when those dialog boxes came up and it wasn’t showing downloads in progress–it had the little red x over the arrow. There is a smaller down arrow a couple spaces to the right that shows the time left in a download. That was not showing anything either. I also have FF set to ask me where to save files to. I’ll just have to pay closer attention from now on.
Thanks much for your help, dstarfire.