This is a feature from FF98 that does this - there is a change one can do to fix this but those links and post I created were deleted and only other way for this to happen is for one to search online and you will find posting that will give directions how to restore this feature from downloading unless you really want to download it from. I was one of those trying to figure why it was doing this until I looked online outside searching with google and found steps to do this.

If you are referring to files you only want to open, they used to be added to your temp directory. You can make that happen now by changing the value of this preference in about:config to true. browser.download.start_downloads_in_tmp_dir

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/about-config-editor-firefox https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1738574#c133

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/manage-downloads-preferences-using-downloads-menu

there is a change one can do to fix this but those links and post I created were deleted

Not deleted, your two threads on the information were hidden. Kiki replied to your later thread on the reasons why. Also you had kept posting wrong information that was for Fx 98.0 to 101.0 when the OP was using Fx 102.0 or newer as the Preference changed.

Hi Ian, I apologize that the following is long, but I wanted to provide some more background and options for opening PDFs.

Using the Open in Firefox option

Firefox can't display PDFs without downloading and saving them somewhere. You can tweak some hidden settings to determine where Firefox saves the file, whether that is the web content cache, the "Save files to:" download folder, or the Windows Temp folder. Here are the slightly messy details.

Background: inline vs. attachment disposition

If web servers don't specify how Firefox should handle a PDF, or if they specify "inline" handling, then then Firefox loads the PDF as web content with its original URL in the address bar. The PDFs are saved with other cached web content, not in your download folder. This is good.

But web servers can try to force a download by setting Content-Disposition: attachment if they don't want browsers to show the files in a tab. Firefox changed what it does in this case:

Before Firefox 98: Firefox always showed a download dialog, even though you had already told Firefox what you wanted to do, even when you checked the box to always do this in the future. It was kind of infuriating.

Firefox 98+: Firefox downloads the file automatically and then opens it. Because these are saved to disk the URLs start with file:///. By default, they are saved in your "Save files to" folder on the Settings page.

New options for saving downloads

In response to user suggestions/complaints, Mozilla added some options to modify the above:

(1) Just for PDFs, override "attachment" disposition to "inline"

When your handling action is "Open in Firefox", all PDFs can now be opened as web content and saved in the cache instead of a regular folder. Here's how you set this up:

(a) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

More info on about:config: Configuration Editor for Firefox. The moderators would like us to remind you that changes made through this back door aren't fully supported and aren't guaranteed to continue working in the future. I'm using this so I feel comfortable mentioning it.

(b) In the search box in the page, type or paste browser.download.open_pdf_attachments_inline and pause while the list is filtered -- requires Firefox 103 or later

(c) Double-click the preference to switch the value from false to true

(2) For all the downloads Firefox saves to disk and opens automatically, change from the "Save files to" folder to the Windows Temp folder (if you made the change in #1, this will affect other kinds of files rather than PDFs)

Here's how you access it:

(a) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

More info on about:config: Configuration Editor for Firefox. The moderators would like us to remind you that changes made through this back door aren't fully supported and aren't guaranteed to continue working in the future.

(b) In the search box in the page, type or paste browser.download.start_downloads_in_tmp_dir and pause while the list is filtered -- requires Firefox 102 or later

(c) Double-click the preference to switch the value from false to true

This would not affect files opened with inline disposition; those will still be in the web content cache.

Hopefully some of that gets Firefox working the way you want.