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While downloading certain files on Google Chrome, the file size is displayed the moment the download begins. For some others, the file size is never displayed until the entire file finishes downloading.

In what cases does this happen ? And why?

Yaitzme
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  • Since you are specific about chrome: does the same happen with different browsers? – Jasper Mar 28 '14 at 11:19
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    possible duplicate of [Why do some downloading files not know their own size?](http://superuser.com/questions/617327/why-do-some-downloading-files-not-know-their-own-size), [How does browser know how much page has been loaded?](http://superuser.com/questions/333697/how-does-browser-know-how-much-page-has-been-loaded) – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 Mar 28 '14 at 16:24

1 Answers1

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This is perhaps due to a missing "Content-Length" header in the HTTP response from the server, i.e. the server doesn't tell the browser how big the downloaded file will be, so the browser can't display a progress bar or the target file size.

This is no error because the Content-Length header is optional, so there is nothing to worry about and nothing you could do about this.

Jasper
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  • Unfortunately, Chrome does not respect Content-Length validations for file downloads. Few browsers will show the download as failed if the content-length does not match. (Chrome is not one of them) https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=501384 – Jacob Powers Apr 24 '23 at 18:21