go to the url bar and type about:config accept warning and search for browser.download.lastDir enter the dir you prefer to be default it will be your 1st choice hereafter. While in that area, you may browse through other choices on downloads but don't change anything not intuitive. If you have a question you can google the option for meaning (like 0,1,2,etc.) or ask here. For instance, 'browser.download.folder.list' is set to 1 but I don't know what 1 means although it sounds interesting. googling gives you the meanings 0=desktop, 1=Downloads folder option, 2=LRU (sic).

Firefox does not have a feature to save in different folders for different file types. It's possible that there is an add-on for that, but I haven't searched for one.

You might be vaguely remembering creating a new preference that turns off the behavior of remembering the last folder on a per-site basis. Here's the rest of the picture:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

More info on about:config: Configuration Editor for Firefox. The moderators would like us to remind you that changes made through this back door aren't fully supported and aren't guaranteed to continue working in the future.

(2) In the search box in the page, type or paste browser.download.lastDir.savePerSite and pause while the list is filtered.

Firefox should display a bar with Boolean Number String and a + sign button. Assuming it does:

(3) Keep the selection on Boolean and click the + button to add a new preference.

(4) If the value of the new preference is set to true, double-click it to switch the value to false

With that new preference in place, Firefox should normally suggest the last used folder regardless of site.

Thanks a lot for the help. The browser.download.folder.list=2 made it a little better.

But I was able to get the main reason why it is so annoying: when I download pictures, pdfs, whatever, and I print the html page as pdf, I have to change the folder for print to pdf separately, it does not use the same directory as the download operation, and I could not find any configuration to change this.

But I was able to get the main reason why it is so annoying: when I download pictures, pdfs, whatever, and I print the html page as pdf, I have to change the folder for print to pdf separately, it does not use the same directory as the download operation, and I could not find any configuration to change this.

I also do not see a setting for this.

In fact, the behavior is weird because if I attach an image to this reply, or use another <input type="file">, then that becomes the new starting directory for "Save as PDF" which does not make much sense. The especially crazy part is that if I start Firefox in a completely separate profile with its own settings, "Save as PDF" also uses the folder I uploaded from as the default directory. My guess is that Firefox just lets the system start in whatever folder "firefox.exe" used last for any purpose. This certainly could be improved.

I added a comment to the most-relevant-sounding open bug report with a link to this thread: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1719317