Mozilla switched how downloads are displayed in the Firefox browser in a recently released version of it.. Instead of being displayed in a window on the screen, they are now highlighted by a download panel that is displayed in the browser's toolbar by default.

You can click on the icon to display downloads, but that display is limited to the last three files that you have downloaded to your system. While you can click on show all downloads to open the download history and display all files you have downloaded, it is not really comfortable to do.

It is not clear why Mozilla did not add a preference or at least an about:config entry so that users can change the file limit of three downloads to another value that they prefer.

You can switch to the old download manager if you want or wait until Mozilla integrates the option to increase the number of downloads that are displayed in the panel in a future browser version. The feature is planned but it may take a while before it is implemented, and when it is, it is not clear if you are free to customize the count or if it will be linked to the screen resolution or browser window resolution instead.

If you do not want to wait that long, you can take a look at the Download Panel Tweaks extension for the Firefox web browser.

The add-on adds a bunch of improvements to the download panel including an option to change the number of downloads that are displayed at the same time in the panel.

It changes the default value to ten automatically, so that the ten latest downloads are always displayed when you click on the icon in the browser's main toolbar. You can modify that value in the add-on's preferences as you see fit to increase or decrease it.

That's however not the only tweak that it makes available to you.

Max download items to display: changes the download file limit of the download panel to the select amount. Maximum height of the panel: enables you to limit the height of the download window when it is open. Reduce height of download rows: compacts the display so that each row takes up less space. Use alternate panel style: switches to a white background and square corners. Fix button hover styling: hover styles do not change when the button is not hovered (not really sure what it does). Ctrl-J toggles panel: open and close the download panel window with the shortcut. Disable alert arrow: the arrow is no longer displayed when downloads are started and stopped. Time format: uses a compact time format. Format of panel status lines: defines how the data is displayed in each line.

Verdict

If you are using Firefox's new download panel but want more control over the data that it displays, then you may find the Download Panel Tweaks extension useful in this regard.

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