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Firefox stopped remembering where to save downloads by site

  • 7 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 12 views
  • Last reply by McCoy

Chris Shaffer
Chris Shaffer
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Before, Firefox would remember where I had saved a file based on the domain. So it would remember that things I download from my banking sites go in the user/finance folder, and things I downloaded from board game sites go in the user/games folder. It stopped doing that and now it defaults to whatever the last used download location was, regardless of the download domain.

How can I get it to revert to the previous behavior? It was very handy for it to remember that a file downloaded from the site http://foo.com/ went in the user/foo folder...

Before, Firefox would remember where I had saved a file based on the domain. So it would remember that things I download from my banking sites go in the user/finance folder, and things I downloaded from board game sites go in the user/games folder. It stopped doing that and now it defaults to whatever the last used download location was, regardless of the download domain. How can I get it to revert to the previous behavior? It was very handy for it to remember that a file downloaded from the site http://foo.com/ went in the user/foo folder...

All Replies (7)

McCoy
McCoy
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Hello Chris Schaffer,

Would you try this please :

Type in the address bar about:config and press Enter (ignore the warning)

Type in the search bar and look for the preference :

browser.download.useDownloadDir and set its value to false (default = "true")

Then type in the search bar and look for the preference :

browser.download.folderList and make sure that its value is not
set to "2" - if it is : change it to 1 (= default).

If you had to change a value, then close and restart Firefox.

Any difference ?

Chris Shaffer
Chris Shaffer Question owner
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useDownloadDir was already set to false and folderList was set to 1.

I went ahead and changed it to True / 2, restarted, then set it back to False / 1.

Unfortunately, it's still not working correctly.

McCoy
McCoy
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Bummer !

Would you try to create this boolean preference :

browser.download.lastDir.savePerSite and set its value to false

(then close and restart Firefox)

Any luck ?

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Does this still work in the current Firefox 74.0 release since you posted with Firefox 75 Beta/DE ?

You aren't using Private Browsing mode or have enabled "Resist Fingerprinting" ?

Chris Shaffer
Chris Shaffer Question owner
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browser.download.lastDir.savePerSite was already false. Changing it to true didn't help, nor did changing it back to false (restarting Firefox each time).

I'm not using Private Browsing.

Privacy.resistFingerprinting is set to false.

I'll investigate if downgrading to 74.0 helps.

Chris Shaffer
Chris Shaffer Question owner
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Downgrading to 74.0 didn't help either

McCoy
McCoy
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I just read a very, very long thread from back in 2011, where numerous people had the same problem.

For some what has been suggested here did the trick; for others nothing seemed to work.

As nothing works for you either, maybe you'd like to give this add-on a try :

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/downthemall/

Maybe this doesn't even come close to doing what you want, but it's worth a try though .....