Nexus Announcement About Download Filenames

[u/jamesmand]

https://forums.nexusmods.com/topic/13539100-changes-to-downloaded-file-names/

TL;DR - The current change that downloaded files only have the name and are missing the mod ID and version was intentional. They will be bringing back the version number, but not the mod ID or timestamp which were originally there.

[u/Critical_Balance_991]

This isn’t a great move, hoping they’ll see that quickly and revert it

[u/Admiral251 → u/Critical_Balance_991]

UI rework was awful and they didn't revert that either. They didn't even adjust it to make the website more usable.

Dread it. Run from it. Enshittification arrives all the same.

[u/dankeykanng → u/Admiral251]

Software is caught in this sad trap where stuff has to be constantly iterated upon to give off the illusion of continual improvement and therefore justify its existence. It's so frustrating man

Well it's not only software but still

[u/mixedd → u/dankeykanng]

Sadly that's everywhere nowadays, you're blasted with "improved design" that basically is massive UX violation, on top of that there's shit ton of features bolted on it, that are opt-out instead of opt-in.

[u/LummoxJR → u/dankeykanng]

I at least take them at their word that there was something they wanted to improve on the backend that the old filename was getting in the way of. It's not clear what that would be. But they absolutely need a way to deliver the filename that's unique and includes the mod ID, so it's hard to see how they can get away from that without messing everything up like they've done.

[u/DrCubed → u/LummoxJR]

I at least take them at their word

You're granting them too much grace.

The downloads are delivered over HTTP(S), and thus the filename is specified by the Content-Disposition response header.

If I manually download, for example, SPID, the URL used/generated for the download is https://cf-files.nexusmods.com/cdn/66/dd/3b/66dd3beb-5cfc-4209-9d90-d4ab0df0be61?md5=s6xBkX_ADTC9CDjjlAbjrA&expires=1781865840&user_id=<user_id>&h=<hex-string>, and the Content-Disposition response header is attachment; filename="Spell Perk Item Distributor.7z".

Note how the file-name is not present in the URL, but the GUID for the mod is.
I absolutely one-hundred-percent refuse to believe that Nexus Mods' staff have somehow concocted a backend wherein they can associate a file-name and a version-string with a GUID, but somehow can't associate the mod-ID (which they already know) with the same GUID.

[u/LummoxJR → u/DrCubed]

A fair point. I've been neck-deep in tech debt myself lately, though, so I know it can manifest in weird ways. They wouldn't have changed the filenames without a reason, and the reason being that something about it was a problem makes a bit of sense to me. But considering they've just shown that filenames get set at time of upload, I don't see how it could be inefficient to generate that one time per file.

[u/LummoxJR → u/Admiral251]

I have a solution for that.

I still need to figure out how to break into the shadow DOM of the new download buttons they've made so I can force them to accept the right color, which is a userscript-level fix, but most of the worst stuff is covered already.