downloads.removeFile()

The removeFile() function of the downloads API removes a downloaded file from disk.

This API removes the file from disk, but does not remove it from the browser's downloads history, therefore a call to downloads.search() will still return the item as a DownloadItem, but its exists attribute will be false.

To remove a file from the downloads history, you need to use downloads.erase().

Syntax

chrome.downloads.removeFile(
  downloadId,      // integer
  function() {...} // optional function
)

This API is also available as browser.downloads.removeFile() in a version that returns a promise.

Parameters

downloadId

An integer representing the id of the DownloadItem you want to delete from disk.

callbackOptional

An optional callback function, which when included is invoked when the removeFile() call completes.

Browser compatibility

The compatibility table in this page is generated from structured data. If you'd like to contribute to the data, please check out https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data and send us a pull request.

Examples

The following snippet (taken from our latest-download example) shows the code that is run when the remove item button is pressed. Here we invoke both the downloads.erase() and removeFile() functions, which remove the file from the download history, and from the actual disk, respectively.

function removeItem() {
  if (!document.querySelector("#remove").classList.contains("disabled")) {
    chrome.downloads.removeFile(latestDownloadId);
    chrome.downloads.erase({id: latestDownloadId});
    window.close();
  }
}

This pattern works for cases where you've got a single item to erase/remove. When you want to delete multiple files at once, you'd have to do something like this:

deleteBtn.onclick = function() {
  chrome.downloads.search({}, function(results) {
    for(var i = 0; i < results.length; i++) {
      chrome.downloads.removeFile(results[i].id);
      chrome.downloads.erase({ id : results[i].id });
    }
  });
}

Example add-ons

• latest-download

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