this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023
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Firefox

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Finally found a fix how to stop firefox downloading each PDF to your local drive (connect.mozilla.org)
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by PropaGandalf@lemmy.world to c/firefox@lemmy.ml
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Hey guys

Today I got so annyed by firefox's default behaviour of downloading each and every PDF file to my disk that I went searching for a solution until I had the problem fixed. And it seems like I have finally found it. I have linked the solution but here is the fix in short:

  1. go to about:config
  2. change browser.download.open_pdf_attachments_inline to true

Thank you jscher2000 for the solution!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/9785046

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[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Even with browser.download.open_pdf_attachments_inline set to false (default), Firefox already opens PDFs instead of downloading them, thanks to this setting:

For what use cases is that needed?

[–] ominouslemon@lemm.ee 4 points 11 months ago

That option did not work for me

[–] PropaGandalf@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

For me it still downloads and then opens it in firefox. In the description it clearly says: Choose how Firefox handles the files you download from the web (...). And I don't want it to download the file to my disk in the first place just store it in chache like a regular website.

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

it doesn't download them for me, unless I explicitly save the PDF that opens

like this example.

(akhtually it'll always download in order to open it, I just mean it doesn't create a PDF in the downloads directory)

[–] PropaGandalf@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Which firefox version are you on? I'm on 122.0b1 (flatpak beta) and changing these settings just defines what happens after I download the file. Also my download folder is set to ~/Downloads

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

121.0 stable, .deb from Firefox's ppa

interesting

[–] PropaGandalf@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Wait do you download the files to you /tmp dir? Or do you store the files in the browser cache?

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

my downloads dir is ~/downloads/ but Firefox doesn't create a file there, so it must use a temp location for the PDF that opens.