Update

Don’t read the old post. It’s a result of an experiment and the experiment failed 🙂

Thanks to _BradleyVX who pointed out the hallucinations that sneaked in to the below list.

Don’t do AI at home, kids!

If you need a list of temporary file names and extensions have a look at this great list, or other file extension lists.

Old Post

Anytime you download a file via a browser, instant messenger, or other apps… it is first saved to a temporary file…

These temporary files are saved with some particular extensions:

For Browsers:

• Chrome – .crdownload
• Firefox – .download (hallucination! should be .part)
• Opera – .opdownload
• Safari – .part (hallucination! should be .download)
• Microsoft Edge – .temp (hallucination! should be .partial)
• Brave – .brave-download

For email clients (most are hallucinations):

• Microsoft Outlook – .tmp
• Mozilla Thunderbird – .part
• Apple Mail – .download
• Gmail Web – .tmp
• Yahoo Mail – .tmp
• ProtonMail – .tmp
• Tutanota – .tmp

For Instant Messengers (most are hallucinations):

• WhatsApp – .temp
• Telegram – .temp
• Discord – .dat
• Signal – .tmp
• Skype – .part
• Facebook Messenger – .download
• Google Chat – .temp

Are there any others?

Now, in the interest of full disclosure… I have not written much of this post. In the past I would manually download these programs, and then would spend hours testing their file-saving capabilities. For this post, I simply asked Google Bard. It’s terrifying and amazing at the same time.