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 won't open PDF's (unless I use Private Browsing)

  • 1 reply
  • 1 has this problem
  • 3 views
  • Last reply by guigs

more options

For some reason, since this morning, Firefox will no longer open PDFs in tabs on my Mac. I'll click on the link (or right-click 'open in new tab'), the page will open, display the pdf interface at the top, but won't load. Occasionally the grey loading bar will move across slightly and stop, although usually nothing will happen at all. If I click on the Document Properties section at the end, it gives me no PDF or file information whatsoever. The most confusing thing is that if I click on the PDF link and select 'open in new private window,' it will open the PDF as per usual - although I don't want lots of new windows open and would rather be able to stick to using tabs. I work through a lot of PDF's at once and having them all together is fairly important.

I've double checked updating Adobe, I've double checked updating Firefox. I've checked on the preferences menu to ensure that PDFs are set to 'Preview in Firefox.' All of these are fine. I've also cleared my cache and restarted everything a few times (just incase). I've also used Chrome and IE just to make sure it's not a file problem, and as expected, these load the PDFs fine. Does anyone have any idea why this has suddenly started happening?

For some reason, since this morning, Firefox will no longer open PDFs in tabs on my Mac. I'll click on the link (or right-click 'open in new tab'), the page will open, display the pdf interface at the top, but won't load. Occasionally the grey loading bar will move across slightly and stop, although usually nothing will happen at all. If I click on the Document Properties section at the end, it gives me no PDF or file information whatsoever. The most confusing thing is that if I click on the PDF link and select 'open in new private window,' it will open the PDF as per usual - although I don't want lots of new windows open and would rather be able to stick to using tabs. I work through a lot of PDF's at once and having them all together is fairly important. I've double checked updating Adobe, I've double checked updating Firefox. I've checked on the preferences menu to ensure that PDFs are set to 'Preview in Firefox.' All of these are fine. I've also cleared my cache and restarted everything a few times (just incase). I've also used Chrome and IE just to make sure it's not a file problem, and as expected, these load the PDFs fine. Does anyone have any idea why this has suddenly started happening?

All Replies (1)

more options

I am not sure why this started happening, however please update to version 32.0.3 when its available. The places we can troubleshoot is in the Applications menu under preferences.

If you set it to pdf.js viewer as default does it not show up?