Pause for download

How do  I pause AVG protection to download a file that i know is safe

Hello Mark,

We will help you in this.
It is not recommenced to disable the temporarily.
Since you are safe about the downloading file(s), you can refer the below link for the steps to disable the AVG temporarily :
https://support.avg.com/SupportArticleView?urlname=Disable-AVG-Antivirus
Thank you.