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every time I view a file from an email or website in Preview (Mac) it is SAVED, no matter what boxes are checked in Preferences. How do I turn this off?

  • 4 replies
  • 2 have this problem
  • 6 views
  • Last reply by dolson9

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If I open a pdf, Word, Excel, jpeg, or ANY type of file it is saved to my desktop (where I set files to be saved). And, this action is done automatically, every time, it doesn't matter what I have set under Firefox>Preferences>Applications.

If I open a pdf, Word, Excel, jpeg, or ANY type of file it is saved to my desktop (where I set files to be saved). And, this action is done automatically, every time, it doesn't matter what I have set under Firefox>Preferences>Applications.

Chosen solution

You can create a new Boolean pref via the right-click context menu with the name browser.helperApps.deleteTempFileOnExit and set the value to true.

The pref is still in the source code:

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Firefox always saves a file before passing it to an external program.

Try to set the Boolean pref browser.helperApps.deleteTempFileOnExit to true on the about:config page to cleanup those saved files.

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Thanks for the reply! I opened <about:config> and scrolled to the <browser.helperApps> section, but there were only three options: 1)"always Ask.force", 2)"neverAsk.openFile", and 3)"neverAsk.saveToDisk". No "deleteTempFileOnExit". Any other ideas? [btw, it's not a problem to delete these files, I just don't like when they pile up on top of each other, creating a large stack]

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Chosen Solution

You can create a new Boolean pref via the right-click context menu with the name browser.helperApps.deleteTempFileOnExit and set the value to true.

The pref is still in the source code:

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thanx cor-el, it worked... mostly. PDF files still remain after shut down, but others (Word, Preview, TextEdit, etc) are deleted. Oddly, this Mozilla Phenomenon doesn't happen in Windows, at least not on my laptop running XP.