The new Microsoft Edge browser has adopted the Chromium open-source project code base and offers better web compatibility and performance over the legacy edge. Microsoft Edge will automatically save files and other items you want to download into your C:\Users\Downloads profile (%UserProfile%\Downloads) folder by default. If the default location is not suitable for your environment and you want to change the download folder, continue below the steps. To get started with changing the downloads folder, open the Microsoft Edge browser and go to the three horizontal dots ( . ) at the top corner of your screen. Then choose Settings as shown in the image below. Go to Downloads on the left menu items and click Change on the right panel. From there you can choose the new location for all downloaded content in Edge. Or you can simply type the line below into the Edge address box to go straight to the Downloads folder settings. Once you click the Change button, select the new download location. For this tutorial, the Desktop is selected. You can now close the Microsoft Edge settings page.
Change the Downloads folder via the Registry
You can also change the default Downloads folder via the Windows registry. This policy also changes all user’s default downloads folders. If you’re logged in as an administrator, you can also change the downloads folder via the Windows registry. To do that, use the steps below: Using the Windows registry is one way to force all users on the system to have the same default Downloads folders. There are multiple ways to do this in Windows, however, using the Windows registry is the easiest and most effective way to do it. To enable, press the Windows Key + R on your keyboard to open the run command box. Or use the search function to search for the Run app. In the command box, type the commands below and press Enter. Then the registry opens, navigate to the path below. From there, right-click on the Edge key and select the New > String Value option to create a REG_SZ value if you don’t see the existing DownloadDirectory value already created. Name the new REG_SZ value as After saving the DWORD above, double-click it to open. Then enter the value of “C:\Users\Public\Desktop” to enable. That should do it! If you enable this policy, Microsoft Edge uses the provided directory regardless of whether the user has specified one or chosen to be prompted for download location every time. If you set an invalid path, Microsoft Edge will default to the user’s default download directory. If the folder specified by the path doesn’t exist, the download will trigger a prompt that asks the user where they want to save their download. That’s it! Conclusion: This post showed you how to change the default downloads folder in Microsoft Edge. If you find any error above please use the comment form below to report.
