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How can I prevent Firefox from opening pdf viewer and obscuring the Firefox tabs when download pdf only is enabled?

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  • Last reply by cor-el

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I set up Firefox in Options to "save" downloaded PDF files. I do not want to launch the Firefox internal PDF viewer or any other 3rd party PDF viewer. However, whenever I download a PDF file Firefox pops up an empty PDF viewer window. This window completely obscures the Firefox browser window and requires me either to closethe viewer or move it out of the way. This is an enormous pain, as my job requires me to download many PDFs throughout the day. M y question is: is there a way to disable Firefox from launching its PDF viewer window when I download and save a PDF file? If there isn't, I urge the Firefox development team to update Firefox to prevent its PDF viewer from launching when downloading PDFs.

I set up Firefox in Options to "save" downloaded PDF files. I do not want to launch the Firefox internal PDF viewer or any other 3rd party PDF viewer. However, whenever I download a PDF file Firefox pops up an empty PDF viewer window. This window completely obscures the Firefox browser window and requires me either to closethe viewer or move it out of the way. This is an enormous pain, as my job requires me to download many PDFs throughout the day. M y question is: is there a way to disable Firefox from launching its PDF viewer window when I download and save a PDF file? If there isn't, I urge the Firefox development team to update Firefox to prevent its PDF viewer from launching when downloading PDFs.
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Hi lrogersjunk, I'm very sorry about that. The first reply was a spammer. I've deactivated his forum account.

If you click on an PDF file and Firefox is set to use the internal PDF viewer, it should not open a new window at all. Perhaps the specific site you are downloading from is triggering the new window. Could you please provide the web address of the site where you are experiencing the issue?

In addition, we'll need some more info about your Firefox setup. Could you please follow the instructions in the following video to provide your troubleshooting information: https://youtu.be/8wKSowxEcbw

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This probably happens because you left-click the link.

Did you try to use "Save Link As" in the right-click context menu ?