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I've seen both these forms used and I was wondering, is either of them incorrect or are they interchangeable?

You can download something ON your device.

You can download something ONTO your device.

TrevorD
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SmokerAtStadium
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  • http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=download+on%2Cdownload+onto&year_start=1980&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share= – mplungjan Aug 22 '13 at 12:50
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    I would use neither, I download thing to devices. – terdon Aug 22 '13 at 12:52
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    One of the many senses of the preposition on is (6.) being performed upon or relayed through the medium of: what's on the television? (Collins). So on could be taken to mean 'using' (your device) ('I've accessed it on my laptop') or 'onto' (your device). – Edwin Ashworth Aug 22 '13 at 12:53
  • @mplungjan http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=download+on%2Cdownload+onto%2C+download+to&year_start=1980&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share= – Kris Aug 22 '13 at 13:26
  • All three prepositions (from, on, [on]to) apply in the case of up- and downloading: “I downloaded the file from the server onto my USB stick on my laptop” is fine, as is “I uploaded the file from my USB stick onto the server on my laptop”. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Aug 22 '13 at 23:26
  • @JanusBahsJacquet I would never use this *“onto”* thing: in fact, it isn’t even a word™. :) It doesn’t matter whether you call something uploading, downloading, loading, or anything else: it’s still just *copying, which always goes from* one place and *to* another. I honestly don’t understand where the confusion lies here. (♬ For unto* us a child is born. . . . ♬)* – tchrist Aug 22 '13 at 23:33
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    @tchrist, in the sense that it is in the dictionaries, ‘onto’ certainly is a word. I would download a file onto (or on to) a device sooner than I would download it to the device—I would only use the latter if talking about a PlayStation, AppleTV, or perhaps a phone. For a computer, disk/drive, flash card, USB stick, etc., I would find ‘to’ awkward and unnatural. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Aug 22 '13 at 23:45
  • @JanusBahsJacquet What dictionaries? The OED talks about “on to”, and notes that it is “now sometimes written onto”. – tchrist Aug 22 '13 at 23:48
  • @tchrist, ODO has it as an accepted (and in US English almost standardised) variant of ‘on to’, while MW doesn't even mention ‘on to’ (searching for which will simply land you at the entry for ‘onto’). ODO notes that the one-word spelling has been in common use since the early 19th century, too. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Aug 22 '13 at 23:52
  • @JanusBahsJacquet Would you ever copy something “on to” somewhere else? – tchrist Aug 22 '13 at 23:57
  • @tchrist, yes, I would. “I copied the file on to my external drive” sounds perfectly natural to me, though with ‘copy’, the simplex ‘to’ also sounds perfectly natural. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Aug 23 '13 at 22:27

3 Answers3

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I work on my computer.

I download data/files to (or onto) my computer.

I upload files / send e-mails from my computer.

TrevorD
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  • One copies files *from* one place and *to* another. What and whether you call it {up,down}loading doesn’t change that at all. – tchrist Aug 22 '13 at 23:30
  • @tchrist I agree that 'copy' covers either direction, but up/down-loading depends at which 'end' of the copying you are located: If you are at the source computer, you are uploading; and if you are at the destination computer you are downloading: analogous to whether you are sending or receiving an e-mail. – TrevorD Jun 23 '17 at 15:06
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The difference is that on denotes the device I'm interacting with, and onto denotes the destination for the received data. The confusion may arise because in the first case below (interacting with the destination device), the two are implicitly the same.

  1. I use a device directly, initiating a download using its own interface or controls, I am downloading on it. That download is almost certainly being stored onto the same device where I initiate it.

  2. I attach a device to a PC, and initiate a download on the PC to be stored on the attached device, I am downloading on the PC and storing it onto the device.

Useless
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The act of downloading is to effectively copy a file from one place (normally on the internet somewhere) to your local machine. In this case, if you're saving the file on your desktop for example, the correct usage would be ONTO as that refers to the location of where you are downloading it to.

However, you are using the to device to download... to technically you are downloading on a device too. I would always use ONTO.

Would it work if you were referring to uploading? "You can upload something on your device" vs. "You can upload something onto your device".

Chris Taylor
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  • Anything in support? More 'opinions' may come down for the post following this. Also, "You can upload something from your device". – Kris Aug 22 '13 at 13:22