Google Chrome for Android is getting a download scheduler

XDA

By Aamir Siddiqui

Published Jul 20, 2020

Google Chrome for Android could be getting a download scheduler that will let users schedule their download to a date and time in the future. Read on!

Google Chrome is the most popular internet browser, and its popularity also spills on over to the Android, thanks to Google's domination across the OS. Consequently, every new feature for Chrome will be available to a considerable portion of smartphone users. Google is continuously working to improve Chrome, and the latest feature that could make its way to the popular browser is a download scheduler.

According to a report from Techdows, Google is working on adding a "download later" feature to Chrome for Android. This feature would reduce the need to rely on a separate download manager app to schedule a file download at a later time. Google Chrome will seemingly offer an option to download the file at a specific date and time in the future, right in the download dialog that is displayed when a download is set to begin.

At the moment, Google Chrome only provides a few download-related options. You can choose the file location and whether to download articles over Wi-Fi, but that's about it. On the latest Chrome Canary, you can enable an experimental flag called "Enable Download Later" present at chrome://flags. This flag will then allow you to schedule whether you want to download the file right then, or when you next connect to a Wi-Fi network, or at a specified time and date in the future. There's also a handy button to save the preference in case you do not need a scheduling option. The Downloads page within Chrome will also show a "Scheduled for later" tab to let you manage the pending downloads.

There is no word on when this feature will make its way to the stable branch, or if it will, at all. Chrome has either added, or has been spotted working on, plenty of nifty features in the past few months, such as the ability to define words with a single tap, a screenshot editor, bottom tab switcher, a switchover to 64-bit for Android 10 devices, biometric authentication for payments, throttling background JavaScript timers to improve battery life, streaming videos in low resolution in Lite mode, and more.

Source: Techdows