Stop saving PDFs to Downloads when viewing in Firefox

[PrimsAlg]

While this has been shared elsewhere, I can't seem to find any actual response from Mozilla other than "we changed it, and now it's like this". When choosing to open a PDF in Firefox, it now saves it directly to Downloads. I (and it seems like quite a lot of other people as well) need to frequently view a document in Firefox, but I rarely need to save it. If I wanted to save it, I would either choose to save it in the first place or use the download button in the PDF viewer. Now I have to block off part of my week to go clean out all of the PDF garbage that gets thrown into Downloads because Mozilla decided to ignore temporary files as a concept and not provide an option to revert back to the normal behavior. There seems to be no practical reason for this change. Please let Firefox use temp files when viewing PDFs rather than turning everyone's Downloads folder into a trash bin.

[Ninetails]

I did post this in another discussion:

At one point, every time I downloaded the FireFox updates, you kept changing the menus to double spaced. I would then spend my time searching the web for the answers to change it back as there was no setting in FireFox to do so easily.

It was getting so annoying that I started to look at other browsers. Then for a time you left the menus alone.

Then with FireFox 130, you did it again (double spaced menus which I abhor) along with changing the folder where my downloads were sent and opening .pdf's instead of downloading them. I am sure I'll find more things you changed as I go along.

I had spent time setting FireFox up more to my liking and you go and change everything to how you think they should be. So now I spending more time setting it back to my preferences. Could you please keep it in mind to not change peoples personal preferences.

Oh, I see another update (131) is ready to download. What will you have changed this time that I will have to readjust? You want to change something? How about something that helps FireFox stop using my hard drive 100% thereby slowing my computer down.

[beeRian]

Hi.  I'm just here to pile on another complaint about this ridiculous feature.  Where's the setting to have firefox also through a pie in my face every time I click "back?"  Cause that would be just as welcome.

[jscher2000]

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@beeRian wrote:

Hi.  I'm just here to pile on another complaint about this ridiculous feature.

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There are a variety of settings to fine-tune how Firefox handles PDFs and other kinds of downloads. What is your preferred behavior?

Assuming you keep the setting to open PDFs in a tab in Firefox

(1) When Firefox opens a file type in a tab, use the system temp folder instead of the Downloads folder (not PDF specific). (see earlier replies about: browser.download.start_downloads_in_tmp_dir)

(2) View all PDFs in a tab, but instead of saving some in Downloads and some in the web content cache, save them all in the cache. (see earlier replies about: browser.download.open_pdf_attachments_inline)

(3) View PDFs in a tab if the site intended that, but if the site intended that they be downloaded, pop up a dialog to ask how I want to view them (old behavior). (preference: browser.download.force_save_internally_handled_attachments)

If you do not want to open PDFs in Firefox

Check the options in this article: https://support.mozilla.org/kb/choose-your-preferred-pdf-viewer-firefox 

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Where's the setting to have firefox also through a pie in my face every time I click "back?"

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Fun idea for an add-on.

[dr_agon]

I have found this hack (because I would not call it a 'solution') some time ago. Recently I installed Firefox on another machine, and after few days I woke up to a Download folder full of rubbish, and had to search again for this.

What makes the devs think that when a user says "open" he/she really means "download and keep forever"?

As danielmmmm said, educate users, sometimes in a hard way, when they forgot to save something, and do not treat everybody as a baby who cannot decide itself.