How to not manually delete download files?
I am honestly in chock with Firefox's terrible decision of not providing any option for the user to delete downloaded files.
It is honestly amazing that they came up with such a terrible decision. My downloads folder is a complete mess now and there seems to be no way to fix this.
I don't understand why not just provide an option for the user to only open files. People should be able to choose their settings.
I refereed to this previous post and the solution there didn't work: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1370409. By setting browser.download.improvements_to_download_panel to false.
Is there actually no way to only open files now?
Chosen solution
Note that Firefox always needs to download a file to be able to show you this file in a tab.
You can set browser.download.start_downloads_in_tmp_dir = true to revert to the previous behavior to use the OS temp folder.
You can open the about:config page via the location/address bar. On the warning page, you can click "Accept the Risk and Continue" to open about:config.
(fixed pref name - thanks for noticing)
Read this answer in context 👍 1All Replies (5)
Chosen Solution
Note that Firefox always needs to download a file to be able to show you this file in a tab.
You can set browser.download.start_downloads_in_tmp_dir = true to revert to the previous behavior to use the OS temp folder.
You can open the about:config page via the location/address bar. On the warning page, you can click "Accept the Risk and Continue" to open about:config.
(fixed pref name - thanks for noticing)
Modified by cor-el
This didn't solve the issue. It is browser.download (without s). I tried setting to true and to false, both cases the files go to downloads when selecting open.
Thanks for noticing this issue with the extra 's' on browser.download.start_downloads_in_tmp_dir. Looking on Bugzilla there appears to have been some confusion with documenting this new pref.
Tom Schuster Comment 135 • 4 months ago
I think there is some kind of mistake here. StaticPrefList.yaml calls this pref browser.download.start_downloads_in_tmp_dir, but Policies.jsm uses browser.download*s*.start_downloads_in_tmp_dir. The release page also has the s.
You could try setting this preference in about:config to false. browser.download.useDownloadDir
From searchfox. org: bool True - Save files directly to the folder configured via the browser.download.folderList preference. False - Always ask the user where to save a file and default to browser.download.lastDir [not a preference] when displaying a folder picker dialog
Well, I realized the indicated option in this forum is different from the one I posted at first. They both are:
- browser.download.improvements_to_download_panel = false
- browser.download.start_downloads_in_tmp_dir = true
The first one has no effect. The second one actually send downloaded files (when selected to only open) to tmp folder, although I can't actually open them, I can only open PDFs if I selected to open with firefox. This is a workaround which quite works for me, since I download a lot of PDFs regularly, but not best solution at all.
I didn't understand what Terry pointed out.
I am extremely disappointed with firefox, it is unbelievable people actually though this change was a good idea. They are making their software worst.