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How do I get the PDF viewer to work again? For years I have used the setting "save" to automatically download. Now I am unable to view them without going in and changing the settings to "open in firefox". I would like to continue to use the save setting without having to constantly change this back and forth. When I click to open the file, all it does it grey out.

Adding this post for SEO indexing purposes, as I cannot reply to the original archived one: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1321170

The original post is one of the top search engine results, and provides a bandaid solution, without addressing the proper root cause, so I want to help whoever stumbles over this.

Original problem:

Dale 1/9/21, 8:26 AM

Firefox Developer Edition 85.0b4, macOS 10.15

If I Google for a PDF and click a link, I get the Firefox download dialog. If I select "Open with Firefox [Developer Edition]", the following things happen:

   The PDF is downloaded to ~/Downloads
   The PDF is opened in a new tab, with that new tab's location bar holding a file:///... URL to the downloaded PDF 

What I would instead like to happen is:

   The PDF is downloaded to some temporary directory where I won't have to worry about deleting it manually
   In whatever tab the PDF is displayed in, the location bar contains the URL where the PDF was (temporarily!) downloaded from 

How can I achieve this?

Not having the URL where a PDF was opened from is very annoying when, for example, I open a bunch of PDF search results to read and review, and I later want to share links to some of those PDFs. Best I can do to find their URLs to give to others is then to try and remember which tab corresponds to which search result, or do mine the downloads tab.

Contrast this with Chrome: I click a Google result for a PDF and the PDF just opens in the current tab with the URL to the PDF in the location bar. No dialogs, no PDF files hanging around in my home directory, and I can just copy the URL to the PDF the same way I'd copy the URL to any web page.

Thank you!

Proposed solution by original poster:

Dale Question owner 1/9/21, 9:27 AM Chosen Solution

Sigh. It appears the problem was one or both of the following preferences:

   pdfjs.enabledCache.state: false
   pdfjs.migrationVersion: 2 

I deleted both, and now clicking on a PDF just opens in the sane, normal way in Firefox that I desire.

Naturally I have no idea how those got set.

When printing a PDF with custom page ranges, the footer text in the print preview (see image) does not match the actual page. As shown in the example image, if I want to print pages 2-16, the preview indicating page 4 is actually page 5.

So, if I want to print with a very custom range, such as 2-4, 6-10, 12-14, 16, it will be very confusing and will take longer to adjust.

And I also print custom ranges like this very often for daily tasks. I’m not sure if this is a bug or just a minor adjustment needed in Firefox’s coding. Thank you in advance for your help.

Hi all, I remember in older versions of Firefox (within the past 6 months) that pdfs embedded in a page would be a hyperlink that you had to click which would open in another tab. Now pdfs automatically open which is very annoying as it makes it difficult to read, while I found a way to open it in another tab I was wondering if there is a setting I can disable so I can just click on a hyperlink.

Thanks in advance

On my banking platform, secured.nedbank.co.za when I click “download” or “print” which usually opens a new tab with a pdf viewable, nothing happens in firefox ios. I have tried disabling everything (enhanced protection, blockers etc), clearing web and private data and reloading but nothing is allowing it?

Firefox is not rendering/displaying charts (e.g. on Etrade), some graphs, and embedded pdfs (ex. on TaxCaddy--cannot see pdf files embedded into the web page). When I use Chrome, the problem goes away. I'm running 136.0.4 (64-bit) on Windows 11.

What can i do to fix this?

When I click on a PDF link it will auto download the PDF but then if I click on the same link again it opens it inline. I want it to always open inline and if I wish to save it I'll manually do that.

I've looked around and I found this that mentions using browser.download.start_downloads_in_tmp_dir and browser.download.open_pdf_attachments_inline. While setting the downloads to be in the tmp dir is nice for not clogging up my downloads it still doesn't solve the issue of opening and not saivng. The setting for opening pdf attachments inline sounds like it should fix it but still every time the first time I click it, it starts downloading it.

Is there any other setting that could stop this or some reason why those settings might not apply in all situations?

Trying to not just edit a PDF in Firefox on Linux but actually edit the document using its Dynamic-XFA format elements of that PDF. XFA is an Adobe proprietary format that they depreciated several years ago but it still works in Adobe Acrobat Free. (I use a Windows guest VM for this as a workaround for now but I'd rather not since it takes extra resources and time). Elements can be filled in FF and some menu drop downs work in FF but other dynamic XFA element buttons don't respond like the one I attached.

In Acrobat the "X" and "Add Contact" buttons will add or remove some elements to the document.

Can this be done in FF desktop?

Version 151.0.1 (64 bit) on desktop PC.

In about:config I know there are a lot of options to modify under the search term "pdfjs" but I don't know what element would allow this to possibly work if its supported.

I wish I had other better options but government documents are what they are.

Hello... currently when I try to open a PDF from the internet, I cannot open it in Firefox. Specifically I have been adding PDF files to a FB page, but cannot open the document when browsing in Firefox. I can open it, when using EDGE.

Save as PDF not working from v137 - no file will be created an no error. Started when I had Samsung One UI 6 and now on One UI 7 it is still not working. Tried to reinstall - no help.

Every document like the below one does not display in firefox esr 115:

https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/docDisplay?docId=c01081836&docLocale=en_US

I get an empty pdf viewer frame. Also the debugger shows the following error;

Uncaught TypeError: Promise.withResolvers is not a function

Is there some way to overcome this problem? a future release of firefox esr?

Well, there is a bug with your downloading files configurations that REALLY ANNOYS me, which is, i want to always select where to save my downloaded files, no problem with that, i just set all configurations to "always ask", but sometimes, especially for pdfs, i want to just open them, without the need to save them to my computer, so the only one i have set as "open with firefox" is the pdfs, and if i want to download them, i just do so by clicking the download button on the corner. BUT, with this configuration, if there is a button to download a pdf, without opening it previously, it will skip the "ask where to download" pop-up, which is a pain in the ass, as usually want my stuff in specific folders, not the general downloads one. And even iff i set pdfs to "always ask" and then chose to open with firefox, it will automatically download it (???????) to the downloads folder, and then open it from my pc, even tho it could open it from the file in the server, which is what i wanted. I just switched to firefox, please fix this awful feature and dont make me find another browser.

Hello Mozilla Support Team,

I have been using Firefox for a long time, and recently I upgraded my Windows system. Before the upgrade, I had set Firefox to open PDFs directly in a PDF Reader other than Firefox’s built-in PDF viewer, and it worked perfectly. However, after the upgrade, Firefox now shows the "Opening when completed" message and opens PDFs slowly, instead of opening them immediately in my chosen PDF Reader.

I have checked the settings, cleared the cache, refreshed Firefox, and even tested with other software, but the issue persists. The settings for handling PDFs are still the same, but they don't seem to work as they used to.

Can you please assist me in resolving this issue? Any help would be much appreciated.

Thank you

So i reinstalled my graphics driver yesterday, and after that when i open a pdf on firefox it only shows blackscreen. it didnt happen on other browsers(chrome, edge)

When I am using FireFox on my iPad and try to open a .pdf file from the browser and I click on the file name, the screen blinks and goes back to the original webpage without opening the file. Basically I can’t open a .pdf file when using FireFox.

Hi, Firefox is hard to use for me right now. The screen turns sometimes black while using the browser. Especially when opening pdf documents in Firefox the screen turns black before the document opens. Also, after switching to another tab or App the pdf is not visible anymore and also black (see sreenshot). I have tried reinstalling Firefox and also start in troubleshoot mode. What is the issue??

Thanks.

Sebastian