This is part of the new download behavior in Firefox 98, which is explained in this article and in the Firefox 98 release notes.

From another thread, /questions/1370146#answer-1488119 Automatically open the Downloads panel

Note that this is controlled by this pref.

• about:config => browser.download.alwaysOpenPanel
• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/about-config-editor-firefox

WARNING: modifying prefs directly via the about:config page can sometimes break Firefox or cause strange behavior, and there is no guarantee that this will keep working in future Firefox releases.

(For the record) Here's the bug report about the browser.download.alwaysOpenPanel preference that you can set to "false" in about:config to stop this from happening (See Bugzilla Etiquette before posting comments in bug reports): Bug 1738372 Want to be able to disable the download panel opening for each download.

NOTE: Bugzilla is not for feedback or support. For more info on Bugzilla etiquette, see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html

This annoyance keeps coming back ever so often. You'd think developers would know that if people found it annoying over a decade ago people might possibly still find it annoying still. Or at least keep the option for users to turn it off manually. Why would they get rid of that?

Sure I could and did change it in the advanced preferences but I'd personally would have preferred not tinkering around with my browser more than necessary.

Thanks for everyone's assistance. Although it is an annoying feature, I do understand why they implemented it (after reading the release notes!).

Have a good one.