How To Resume Chrome Downloads (Using Firefox)

The biggest drawback of Chrome when competing against other Web Browsers is you cannot continue a failed download from the point it failed, instead you have to restart. This might not be an issue if it was just a tiny file or a temporary download URL, but what if you were downloading a file that is in GBs and it was 70%+ completed? Do you really want to start from the beginning?

We have some solution for you that should be less time consuming than starting the whole download again. All you have to do is locate the unfinished download and resume it in Firefox.

For this purpose, you will need to have Firefox installed

Locate Failed Download

For this method, we first need to locate the failed download file. The file should be located in the “Download” folder in your PC unless you changed the download destination from Chrome browser. Just look for the file where all your downloaded files are normally located. The file will have a .CRDOWNLOAD extension and the name of the file in most cases will be the original name or in some cases “Unconfirmed (few numbers)”.

Note: .CRDOWNLOAD file will only be available if the download failed to complete due to any reason, such as Power outage, Windows update, connection error or any error which could force Chrome to shut down or corrupt download file. If you canceled the download on purpose then this file will also be removed and you cannot continue where you canceled the download.

Tip: If you need to download something big in future, then try using a download manager such as FlashGet or use another browser such as FireFox as they come with a resume button, so your time is not wasted if the download fails.

Method #1: Resume Chrome Download using Firefox

For this purpose, you need to have both Firefox and Chrome installed on your PC. If you already have Firefox then carry on, if you don’t then download it. The process is quite simple if you follow exactly, try not to confuse yourself with all the names, just do what we tell you.

Go to Google Chrome and open menu at the upper right corner of the screen (it’s the three horizontal lines). From there click on “Downloads” to see all the downloaded files. You can also press Ctrl+J to go directly to the “Downloads” page.

There locate the file which failed to download and you want to resume and right click on it. From the Context Menu (the menu which pop up when you right click on the file) click on “Copy link address” to copy the download link of the file.

Now, open Firefox and paste that link in the search bar and press “Enter” to start the download in Firefox (you can also press Ctrl+V to paste).

Click on Downloads icon next to the search bar to open all downloads. There, right click on the download which you just started and choose “Pause” to pause the download.

Look for the download file which Firefox is downloading, it should be in the downloads folder where your failed download file is, unless you didn’t save it there. In our case, it is in “Downloads” with name “avast_free_antivirus_setup.exe.part” where “.part” is the name of the extension.

In this tutorial, the name of the failed file from Chrome is “Unconfirmed 837509” (It can be different for you, either it will be the real name of the download file or “Unconfirmed xxxxxx).. We need to switch the names and extensions of each file to make this method work.

Note: This part can be really confusing, it will not work for many people as even one mistake during changing extensions and name can lead to failure. However, we will do a little trick here to keep things simple without any confusions, so you will be sure that you get it the right in the first attempt.

Instead of going deep into names and extensions, we can just copy the whole thing and switch it. here is how to do it.

Step #1: Copy The Name and Extension of Firefox Download File

Right click on download file from Firefox (avast_free_antivirus_setup.exe.part) and from the menu click on “Rename”.

There, only the name of file will be highlighted, you need to highlight both name and extension. Just press Ctrl+A here or use the mouse to highlight the whole text.

Now, copy that text (name and extension) by right clicking on it and choosing “Copy” from the menu or pressing Ctrl+C. When you are sure that the text has been copied, delete this file (it’s compulsory, the process will not work if the file is not deleted before switching).

Step #2: Switch the Name and Extension

Right click on the failed download from Chrome (Unconfirmed 837509) and click on rename.

The name of the file will only be highlighted here as well, you need to highlight the whole text (name and extension). Just highlight the whole text the way you did for “Firefox download file”.

When the whole text is highlighted, paste the text which you copied by either right clicking on it and clicking on “Paste” or by pressing Ctrl+V, and press Enter. A prompt will pop up, just click on “Yes” and the name will be changed.