r/firefox • u/DreadDiana • 5h ago

Help (Android) [Android] How do I make Firefox download PDFs when I click download links instead of opening it in its PDF viewer?

I'm trying to download some PDFs, but whenever I do, Firefox opens them in another tab and I can't actually download it until it's done loading, with no indicator of how long that will be. Sometimes the "download link" option works, and from my experience when it does, the PDF downloads noticably faster than it takes for the sams PDF to load in the viewer.

Every post I've seen discussing this issue only seems to give solutions for the desktop version rather than Android.

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1

u/coderman64 5h ago

There's an about:config setting for it. You can access about:config on android using chrome://geckoview/content/config.xhtml

search for "pdfjs.disabled" and set it to true.

For the future, you can set "general.aboutConfig.enable" to true to re-enable the "about:config" URL. Just know that some settings in there can seriously mess up your browser.

3

u/j--__ 4h ago

general.aboutConfig.enable is continuously reset by release channel firefox mobile. just bookmark chrome://geckoview/content/config.xhtml.

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u/DreadDiana 57m ago

Thanks!

2

u/cssunil 4h ago

First, know this, when on click a PDF file opens in browser, it means it has already been downloaded, see your download folder. And the time to open a PDF outside the browser is saved by making the same file opened in the browser itself.

We download a PDF to open it eventually. Anyhow, there is always a way to disable it as suggested by other comments.

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u/supey777 2h ago

I think you can also right click on a link and select "save target as"