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.

Rohkem teavet

Firefox saves to Download folder instead of asking where to save for Forced download link of files set to "Open in Firefox"

  • 4 vastust
  • 6 on selline probleem
  • 1 view
  • Viimati vastas EarElephant

more options

My FF is set up to: - Always ask you where to save files - Open PDF in Firefox

On normal PDF links, FF opens the PDF normally without downloading (or after downloading it silently in a temporary location invisible to me). On "Force Download" links, FF downloads the PDF to the Download folder without asking where to save it. This is for example the case when clicking "Download" on a file in Gmail. If I click "Download" in Gmail on another file type that I have not set to "Open in Firefox", FF does ask me where to save it.

My expectation would be that, if the file cannot be opened in the browser, then FF would revert to the user's chosen behavior of "Always ask you where to save files".

My FF is set up to: - Always ask you where to save files - Open PDF in Firefox On normal PDF links, FF opens the PDF normally without downloading (or after downloading it silently in a temporary location invisible to me). On "Force Download" links, FF downloads the PDF to the Download folder without asking where to save it. This is for example the case when clicking "Download" on a file in Gmail. If I click "Download" in Gmail on another file type that I have not set to "Open in Firefox", FF does ask me where to save it. My expectation would be that, if the file cannot be opened in the browser, then FF would revert to the user's chosen behavior of "Always ask you where to save files".

All Replies (4)

more options

You can set browser.download.start_downloads_in_tmp_dir = true on the about:config page to make Firefox use the OS temp folder.

You can open the about:config page via the location/address bar. On the warning page, you can click "Accept the Risk and Continue" to open about:config.

more options

This doesn't solve my problem. Regardless of which folder FF will use, it's not doing what I asked, which is to ask me where to save a file whenever a file is downloaded. Using the OS temp folder only makes it worse in that it's now also harder to find the downloaded file.

more options
more options

These are unrelated to my issue. The issue I am reporting is a bug. FF does not have the intended behavior specified in the settings. When clicking Download on a link that "Force Downloads" a PDF, FF should ask where to save the PDF, because it's no longer "Open"-ing the file, it's Downloading it, so the Download setting should preempt the Open setting.