There are some people who are complaining about the fact that the Downloads window was removed from Safari in Lion and replaced with a popover instead. How can we possibly cope without a floating window showing the progress of current downloads?! Quite easily, actually.

In Safari for Snow Leopard and earlier, current downloads were shown in a separate window like this:

Screenshot of the old Downloads Window from Snow Leopard.

It was actually quite annoying, since once all the downloads were finished, it would stay open anyway. Being as OCD as I am about windows (you would never see a window on my Mac that wasn't centred above the Dock), having an empty window hanging around bothered me. So I was pleased when, in Lion, the window was replaced with a popover that can be opened from the toolbar.

Screenshot of the new popover in Lion.

When there's no download in progress, the toolbar icon disappears, making the interface a lot cleaner. But, like with everything else Apple does, some people are getting upset about it. Some of the complaints they have include:

  • The popover doesn't stay open so it's hard to keep an eye on a download in progress.
  • There used to be a shortcut (⌥⌘L) to open the Downloads window, which has been removed.
  • You can't move the popover.

I will admit that not being able to move it is a valid point, but that's a small price to pay for the other improvements. As for not being able to keep an eye on downloads, it's pretty easy to do so still. First off, there's a progress bar in the toolbar button itself. If that doesn't do it for you, a partly downloaded file shows a progress bar on its icon in the Finder.

The icon of a partly downloaded file in the Finder.

Since on most computers, the Downloads folder is on the Dock, it's easy to keep an eye on a download by glancing at the Dock.

Now let's talk about the ⌥⌘L shortcut. There's an AppleScript you can download from Red Sweater Software to show or hide the popover. You can then use hotkey software such as Red Sweater's FastKeys to set up a shortcut to run the script.

Personally, I think the popover is an improvement, but there were always going to be people who didn't. Hopefully they'll come around given time.