Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Firefox downloads a file, even if I choose "Cancel".

  • 2 cavab
  • 3 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by 3CAVM

more options

If I click a link to a file (eg, PDF, DOC), a dialog box appears that asks me to either "Open with [some application]" or "Save File". This dialog has a "Cancel" or "OK" button. So if I choose cancel -- meaning that I do not want to download the file -- Firefox goes ahead and downloads it anyway. In fact, it seems to actually download the file as soon as I click the link, before I've even had a chance to click "Cancel" or "OK". This does not seem like the correct behavior to me. Is there a setting somewhere that can turn off this automatic downloading?

I'm using Firefox 20.0 on a Mac.

If I click a link to a file (eg, PDF, DOC), a dialog box appears that asks me to either "Open with [some application]" or "Save File". This dialog has a "Cancel" or "OK" button. So if I choose cancel -- meaning that I do not want to download the file -- Firefox goes ahead and downloads it anyway. In fact, it seems to actually download the file as soon as I click the link, before I've even had a chance to click "Cancel" or "OK". This does not seem like the correct behavior to me. Is there a setting somewhere that can turn off this automatic downloading? I'm using Firefox 20.0 on a Mac.

Chosen solution

hello, yes your observations are correct, firefox will begin to download a file immediately even when you haven't yet made a choice were to save it / how to open the file or to cancel the download. so this is the expected behaviour & this is probably done to decrease the time it takes to download the file in question. i don't think that there is any setting in firefox to change that behaviour...

Read this answer in context 👍 2

All Replies (2)

more options

Seçilmiş Həll

hello, yes your observations are correct, firefox will begin to download a file immediately even when you haven't yet made a choice were to save it / how to open the file or to cancel the download. so this is the expected behaviour & this is probably done to decrease the time it takes to download the file in question. i don't think that there is any setting in firefox to change that behaviour...

more options

Thanks for the quick reply. It's good to know that's how it's supposed to work, even if I don't necessarily like it :)