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

How can I make Firefox stop setting all downloaded files to "Share with nobody"?

more options

For the last few months, every file I download with Firefox has its homegroup share option set to "Share with nobody". All my user accounts are administrator level, I have the sharing set properly in the destination file, and I am using FF 27.0.1. I have set the "scan when done" and "save zone information" to false in about:config. I have always had FF set to ask me where to save a download every time, and I've only had this problem recently. A couple topics said that this would be fixed in 27, but it is not for me.

For the last few months, every file I download with Firefox has its homegroup share option set to "Share with nobody". All my user accounts are administrator level, I have the sharing set properly in the destination file, and I am using FF 27.0.1. I have set the "scan when done" and "save zone information" to false in about:config. I have always had FF set to ask me where to save a download every time, and I've only had this problem recently. A couple topics said that this would be fixed in 27, but it is not for me.

All Replies (4)

more options

Hi Dredhage, Please try to right click on the default folder that your downloads are downloaded to and change the permission of the folder. What are the security options?

The bug that I though you were referring to is not for windows Bug 919076 - Support group and world-readable saved file permissions on Linux and Mac

This one says that it will be fixed in version 28/29 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=951028#c39

more options

For Windows users, as noted in the first reply, this started in Firefox 26 when the download code in Firefox was substantially changed, and won't be fixed until the release of Firefox 28 (in about 4 weeks).

Is this creating a current problem because you share your drive with others, or is this more of an annoyance?

The least arduous manual workaround I know about is to copy and paste the files in a Windows Explorer window. When you do that Windows assigns the copies the privileges of the destination folder automatically. Or perhaps someone has created a script you can run to fix the ACLs for all of the files at once?

more options

All my folders are set with sharing for the entire homegroup, and it doesn't matter where I save it, they wind up with the padlock. It's mostly an annoyance, but I do share files between desktop/laptop, and if I forget to go through and manually change all the permissions after every download, it can cause some inconvenience.

Thanks for the responses. I'll deal with it for now and hope that future releases fix it. :(

more options

The problem is created by using the temp folder, which is locked to the current user. Instead of copying the file from the temp folder, pasting to the desired download location, then deleting the file from the temp folder, Firefox uses a faster move command (when the destination is on the same drive as the temp folder). That move command does not rewrite the permissions to match the destination.

I think someone tried to work around this by making the permissions on the temp folder more liberal, but I don't think that worked or at least I don't recall anyone proclaiming success with that. (I don't think it's possible to force Firefox to use a folder other than the system temp folder.)