All You Need to Know about Download Manager for Safari iOS 13

Updated Aug 09,2019 | by Cody

iOS 13 has bought us some great news. Among them, the Download Manager for Safari has been long expected. Previously, it is tricky to download files on iPhone. Luckily, the Safari on iOS 13 or iPadOS make it more intuitive and convenient to download files.

As for the latest version, iOS 13 Beta 6, Safari Downloader Manager supports multiple formats of file downloads, including audio and video files, supports multi-tasking download at the same time, supports background download and resume unfinished download task.

Exiting Safari from the background interrupts the download task. The downloaded, by default, will be saved in the built-in Files App and you can change the default location. However, there is no new download task function and only files that can be downloaded directly are supported.

As long as you are on iOS 13, you can simply click on the downloadable file from Safari and a prompt will appear to ask if you want to download it. You can just click "Download" to confirm and start downloading the file.

For some audio and video URL, when you tap on it, it will start to play. In that case, you can use 3D touch, or long press the menu to choose to download the file.

Tip: In this way, you can directly download some video or audio that is parsed by the website when you don’t have the download link. 

When downloading a file, there will be a download arrow on the right side of the address bar. You can click to expand the size and check the download progress. You can also click the magnifying glass icon to quickly open the folder where the file is stored. 

As mentioned, the downloaded file will be saved to the Files app by default and it will be uploaded to iCloud automatically if you do not change the settings.

If you want to change Safari downloads folder, it’s easy. Just open the Settings app and navigate to  Safari > Downloads, and you can set the file storage location. If you have connected a few cloud drives to the Files app, then you will see a list of possible download locations. The default, Downloads folder is in iCloud, you can change to On My iPad, which will stop your downloads getting re-uploaded to iCloud, and other cloud drives that you have enabled in Files app like Dropbox, Google Drive, Onedrive, etc.  

If you tap the Other option, you can select any other folder on your iPad or iPhone. To find your downloaded files, just open the Files app and go to that folder you chose.

After downing a few items, you want to keep the list clean so you can see an option to Remove Download List Items. You can choose to remove download list items after one day, or Upon successful download, and then Safari will clean up the list automatically. Of course, you can also choose the remove them manually.

The iOS 13 system brings a lot of updates, Safari continues to improve, and the enhanced file download feature makes it easy to download files in various formats. The new auto-close tab is also available, and the new reader mode is also very useful.

When uploading a file through Safari, it will now tell you how big that file is and you can select the original size, medium size, or small size before you send it, which is very useful to save data usage. 

For those who use the Safari browser, iOS 13's Safari is getting better and better. If you can’t wait for the official release of iOS 13, you can easily update to iOS 13 Beta by installing the iOS 13 Beta Profile.

Related Readings for Reference