Shame on you for not using the most popular executables that everyone else uses!
See if there is anything relevant under security in: chrome://settings/privacy

Chrome is one big anti-feature IMO. Such setting is not something I'd expect in their browser.

Maybe, in theory, with selective traffic altering/blocking using Proxomitron Reborn, but it could be that the relevant traffic to their server is not easily decipherable.

A while back I managed to block automatic extension updates with it. But at the end of the day, I prefer browsers with ZERO self-initiated connections to Google.

IMHO, except the forced renaming (which would not be do bad if it just appended something to the name) and the apparent inability to disable this is not quite as bad as the both passive aggressive and intermittent way linking to http grom an https site works (worked).

Re: The bracket thieves

This is indeed an incredibly annoying feature that seems to come from a place where all users are automatically assumed to be clueless imbeciles, but file renaming is something new to me. So far, I've registered two variations of trying to prevent a file download, one is where I can click on the downloaded files icon on the main screen and further click download to save the already-downloaded but "suspicious" file, and the other is where I have to click Ctrl+J, find the blocked file and go through one or two confirmation menus to actually download it. The latter assumes that the file is absolutely dangerous, and I have to absolve Chrome from any responsibility for the consequences of downloading it.

However, in neither case the file names were changed when a file was saved to the HDD.

There's yet another workaround to this nonsense, namely using a file download manager. Cumbersome, but it has other advantages like split downloads as well.

Yes, that was the previous behavior known to me, annoying enough in itself. I am not sure if it's only doing it on old windows 3.1 driver files. Of course it will change my system behavior, that's the whole frigging point. I don't know how they can't get past the inability to conceive that you might be downloading things that are for another machine. Soon it will not let you download nVidia drivers if you've currently got a Radeon installed or something equally stupid.

I just switch browsers when something like this happens. I have 14 modern browsers installed (plus an old version of Navigator for legacy compatibility reasons.) If one does something that annoys me, I just launch another.

Last time this happened it left me stumped. I click the download link and immediately go to file explorer to find the file, but there is no file. OK maybe I didn't really click it, go back to the site (which I had closed) and click it again really good, like writing your password for the 3rd time after two failed attempts. Certain that I now succeeded in this complex task I go look for the file again, only to feel stupid.

Yes then I went to the browser's downloads page and found out that only in that place there is a conversation you need to have in order to be allowed your file. I don't know what level of protection this approach offers or to whom, but it's plain broken UX. It's written right there in Programming 101.

Seems to be Google itself causing this and not Chrome because it doesn't happen on Un-Googled Chromium 122.0.6261.94-1.

https://ungoogled-software.github.io/ungoogle … omium-binaries/

edit--

Doesn't happen in Brave browser either so it's definitely Google.

I tried Ungoogled Chromium 124, it complains about files downloaded from HTTP sites, just like plain Google Chrome. Maybe some folks have web apps on the local network where it doesn't matter!? Boycott Google is the only answer, but it won't happen 'cause people suck.