v98 download behavior misunderstands why we download things

[EddyD]

Sorry I'm new around here so I'm not sure I get the difference between Ideas and Discussions.

Changes to how file downloads are handled in Firefox version 98 is a breaking change. Before this, FF understood that there are 2 different reasons why a file might be downloaded:

1. Because the User explicitly wants to save a file for later reference - these files were saved to a directory chosen by the User in Settings
2. Because the System needs to save a file e.g. in order to invoke an external handler such as a PDF viewer - these files were saved to a TEMP directory, and not controlled by Settings

Now under v98 both types of files are saved to the same location - e.g. my Desktop. So my Desktop is now full of files I consider to be temporary and useless!

Please restore the old behavior of 2 different locations for the 2 different types of download.

[Albwal]

I have the exact same problem. Please fix it

[skylianggoodqiu]

Just find someone who has the same problems. So I will not open a new one and paste my ticket here

## OS + Version

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.19044.2075]

Firefox: 105.0.3 (64-bit)

## Configuration

Settings

-> Input "pdf" in `Find in Settings`

-> In "Applications" -> "Portable Document Format (PDF)", select "Always ask"

Other Settings

- "Downloads" is set to "Save files to Desktop" and "Always ask you where to save files" is selected

## Problems

- When clicking a link, e.g. "https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040.pdf", it shows the dialog "Opening f1040 pdf". It is expected.
- Select "Open with Firefox" and click "OK", the file is opened in Firefox and I get a file on my "Desktop". The "Open" behavior is as expected but it should NOT be downloaded to my local folder.
- Select "Open with <my local PDF viewer>", the same thing happened.

## Action Required

Please help take care of this issue. The purpose that I selected "Open with .." is that I only want to view this file temporarily, NOT to download it. If I really need to save one file into a local folder, I will explicitly select "Save File".

[jscher2000]

Hi All, when you set the action for Portable Document Format (PDF) to "Always ask" then Firefox will always be saving the PDF to disk somewhere. This is different from keeping the default action of "Open in Firefox" which sometimes saves PDFs in the web content cache and sometimes auto-saves the PDF to disk.

With Always ask as your action for PDFs

Since Firefox always needs to save the PDF when you choose an Open option, you could consider switching it from saving in the "Save files to:" folder (default in Firefox 98+) to the Windows Temp or Linux /tmp folder (default before Firefox 98). Here's how:

(A) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

More info on about:config: Configuration Editor for Firefox. Please keep in mind that changes made through this back door aren't fully supported and aren't guaranteed to continue working in the future.

(B) In the search box in the page, type or paste browser.download.start_downloads_in_tmp_dir and pause while the list is filtered (this exists in Firefox 102 and later)

(C) Double-click the preference to switch the value from false to true (or click the toggle button toward the right end of the row)

With Open in Firefox as your action for PDFs

If you want to make Firefox consistently save PDFs in the web content cache rather than letting the web server dictate what happens*, a new option was added in Firefox 103 for that:

(A) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

More info on about:config: Configuration Editor for Firefox. Please keep in mind that changes made through this back door aren't fully supported and aren't guaranteed to continue working in the future.

(B) In the search box in the page, type or paste browser.download.open_pdf_attachments_inline and pause while the list is filtered (this exists in Firefox 103 and later)

(C) Double-click the preference to switch the value from false to true (or click the toggle button toward the right end of the row)

* Why do I say this? If the web server sends the Content-Disposition: attachment header with the PDF, Firefox always handles it as a download instead of as web content. Finally we can cure this in Firefox 103+.

[skylianggoodqiu]

I use the option "Always ask", so I tried the first solution, changing `browser.download.start_downloads_in_tmp_dir` to true, which works for me.

I like this behavior because sometimes the pdf will be downloaded for editing or backup but sometimes I just want to glance at it and close it.

Thank you @jscher2000 , your answer helps me a lot.