Stop downloading PDFs and making URLs hard to find

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 o… (emoñe’ẽve)

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.

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MAC Platform:

             OS:   macOS Taho 26.5.1

Computer: MacBook Pro 16-inch 2021

                    Chip:  Apple M1 Pro (Silicon)
                    Memory:  32GB LPDDR5 (Hynix manufacturer)
                    Graphics:  Apple M1 Pro  GPU Built-In Bus, - 16 Total Cores, Vendor Apple, Metal Support: Metal 4
                    Model Identifier:  MacBookPro18,1
                   Model Number: Z14Z00109LL/A
                   Total Number of Cores:  10 (8 Performance and 2 Efficiency)
                   System Firmware & OS Loader Version:  18000.120.36
                   Activation Lock Status:  Enabled
                   Internal Storage:  SSD 4TB Capacity ;  File System APFS; Free 2.12 TB
FireFox for MAC:   Version 15.1.0.3 (aarch64)

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Sometimes FF after fresh down load from the official FF site for MAC will work great for an hour or half a day and then out of now where go into the spinning beach ball , and unable to enter data into any field - completly bricked and FF status shown as Not Responding. Tnis could happen immediately, or after an hour or anytime within a day or two.

No way of deciphering or determining what in the heck triggers it or why - way way too many factors and settings and variables both within the FF registry and the macOS and the activity I may or may not be doing at any given time.

I will say I experienced this when all apps on my MAC were shutdown, no apps up and running, but I do use Backblaze, Mai Backup X, Malwarebytes, Dropbox, MS NTFS Tuxera, DriveDX which all have ongoing background tasks running all the time or at least in the background from time to time.

However, I have used this setup for the last few years with Firefox MAC with absolutely no hiccup whatsoever.

And then immediately after the last FirForx update on Tahoe, just before I applied the latest 16.5.1 Tahoe upgrade is the intermittant freezing with FF started.

Could this be a FF / Tahoe incompatibility issue?

If not, does anyone out there have anything to fix this?

And yes i did a complete uninstall of all of FF hidden Library folders as well as the "firefox.app" itself - if anyone tells me to uninstall all the hidden FF folders and files in ~/Library one more time, then forget it, I am done using FireFox. Been there and done there a number of times the last week, exhausted with that, and doesn't do a thing.

And yes kept deleting and creating new FF profiles and did not fix the issue.

So does some great genius Mozzilla FF Mac SW engineer have any clue as to the real issue and the real fix without sending me on a wild goose chase?

thank you. clb6

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