should you delete the downloads in finder

Like most things in life, it's never as simple as "yes or no".

Only you know what you downloaded. Only you know whether it's of value to you. It's likely that everything there can be downloaded again (if you can find it again); but it's often useful to keep things. Perhaps move them to an external drive?

If you have time machine, they will be saved for a while, anyway. It is probably safe to delete them.

(What? You don't have a backup? Then you have bigger problems than the contents of your download folder!)

darlaray wrote:

Thank you for your help. There are pictures, and files in the download in the finder and some of the files are in my documents, and I was afraid if I deleted them in the download they would disappear in my documents.

If you have file 123.jpg in your Downloads (for example) and copied it to put in your Pictures folder, deleting what's in Downloads will not delete what's in Pictures.

Not if it is a download of the installer for some software you paid a fortune for.

It just depends on what it is.