Chrome + Gmail = Drag Attachments to Save To Your Computer

by Dinu on 04/08/2010



Google has announced a Chrome Only Gmail feature. Now you can drag attachments in your inbox to your computer to save them. Not sure if this feature will remain exclusive for Google Chrome users .. What do you think ?

drag attachments gmail to save

How To Use

Let’s say you have an email open containing an attachment. Hover your mouse over the attachment’s “Download” link or its file icon and a tooltip appears that says: “Click to view OR drag to your desktop to save.”

Simply click and hold, then drag your cursor to anywhere in your file system that you want to save the file. Release the mouse button, and voilà! Your attachment is saved (for large files, you may see a progress dialog).


thanks Gmail Blog for the tip and How To

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{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }

PhistucK August 4, 2010 at 3:50 pm

No, it will not remain a Google Chrome only feature.
Once the rest of the browsers implement the File API according to the specifications, they will support it, too.

Reply

chrome story August 4, 2010 at 3:52 pm

cool, thanks for the quick update !!

we should appreciate the fact that Google does not want to make this a chrome only feature … right ?

Reply

Steve February 4, 2011 at 10:52 pm

This feature has not been working for the past two months. I think that this was a great feature, and I used it 50 times a day (when it was working). Hopefully we can get Google to update chrome or the necessary API to get this wonderful convenience feature working again!

Reply

chrome story February 4, 2011 at 11:18 pm

which branch are you on ? Stable / beta / Dev ?

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Steve February 5, 2011 at 12:11 am

I don’t remember which one of these I am subscribed to for this machine. I am trying to remember how to check & change this setting. The feature for Drag-and-Drop saving has not been working for me on any of my machines, however. I believe there is a combination of Stable and Beta between them.

Reply

chrome story February 5, 2011 at 12:16 am

you can check it wrench menu > about .. it will show if you are on dev beta or stable

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Steve February 5, 2011 at 12:42 am

Okay great. I just moved from Stable to Beta by installing the Chrome 5 beta on this machine, to see if it had any effect. Unfortunately, it is still not working for me (Drag to save that is).

chrome story February 5, 2011 at 12:47 am

hmm, you might want to wait for some more time .. may be they are working on it..

Reply

Steve February 5, 2011 at 1:03 am

Thanks

Reply

PhistucK February 7, 2011 at 11:27 am

Wait, you wrote Chrome 5 beta. This is an very old version (we are at Chrome 9 beta\stable now, Chrome 10 dev and Chromium\Chrome 10 (canary)). Update your browser immediately, it has security issues.

Reply

Steve February 7, 2011 at 10:38 pm

Yes…. thanks. it appears the version I am on is 9.0.597.86

It was probably back when the 5 beta was announced that I last “knew” what version I was in. Any thoughts on this issue with the drag-to-save feature regarding Gmail? Does this currently work for anyone?

Reply

PhistucK February 7, 2011 at 11:28 am

*a very

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timmyjoe42 February 11, 2011 at 11:09 pm

I too lost this feature a few months ago. I loved it. I can drag and drop into gmail, but can’t drag and drop out of email. I am currently using Chrome 9.0.597.98

Any updates on Google getting this to work? Is it a security problem?

We use google apps at the office so I have to download and organize a lot of attachments when I want to save them on our server.

Reply

Joe February 16, 2011 at 9:14 am

Yeah same here, this hasn’t worked for quite some time now :(
I loved it back when it did work. I keep hoping every time I update Chrome that it will work but so far no luck. I’m currently on version 10.0.648.45 .

Reply

chrome story February 17, 2011 at 2:46 am

hmm, may be they are working on it ?

Reply

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