Download items from the web using Safari on Mac

Download music, PDFs, software, and other items by clicking links on webpages.

Important: If a download contains software, an alert appears when you open the item. To be safe, don’t open it if you weren’t expecting a software program or if it’s not from a trusted source.

Open Safari for me

Download an item

In the Safari app on your Mac, click anything identified as a download link, or Control-click an image or other object on the webpage.
Choose Download Linked File. (Some webpage items can’t be downloaded.)

Safari decompresses files such as .zip files after it downloads them.

Note: If you download an item that you previously downloaded, Safari removes the older duplicate so it doesn’t take up space on your Mac. See Optimize storage space.

If you have trouble downloading, try any of the following:

If Safari is still downloading the item, wait for it to finish. You can’t open an item while it’s being downloaded.
If the download is paused, resume it. Show the downloads list by clicking the Show Downloads button , then click the Resume button for the paused download.
Sometimes a download is incomplete because the file was damaged. Try downloading it again.
Make sure you have the app needed to open the file. If you do, the file may have been corrupted during the download. Delete it, then try downloading it again.

See items you downloaded

In the Safari app on your Mac, click the Show Downloads button near the top-right corner of the Safari window.

The button isn’t shown if the downloads list is empty.
Do any of the following:
- Pause a download: Click the Stop button to the right of the filename in the downloads list. To resume, click the Resume button .
- Find a downloaded item on your Mac: Click the magnifying glass next to the filename in the downloads list. If you move a file or change the download location after downloading it, Safari can’t find the file.
  
  Tip: To change where downloaded items are saved on your Mac, choose Safari > Settings, click General, then click the “File download location” pop-up menu and choose a location.
- Clear the downloads list: In the downloads list, click Clear. To remove one item, Control-click it, then choose Remove From List.
  
  By default, Safari automatically removes an item after one day. To change when items are automatically removed, choose Safari > Settings, click General, then click the “Remove download list items” pop-up menu and choose an option.

The downloaded file may be a compressed archive or disk image that contains the file you want. If the file is from a trusted site, double-click it to decompress it.

If you downloaded an app and you see a message that the app can’t be opened because it’s from an unidentified developer or wasn’t downloaded from the Mac App Store, you can open the app by overriding security settings.