There is something unusual going on, but first, this seems to work normally:

(1) Open a new tab and open your Yahoo Inbox in only that one tab (2) Click the message that has the attachment; it appears in the same tab (3) Hover the image attachment and click the download button and Save the file -- nothing weird happens

If I force Yahoo Mail to display a message in a second tab, and then download an attachment from that message, then I am able to replicate the unwanted behavior. Here are the four ways I tested:

Scenario A: Open Inbox in a second tab or a new window. Either:

• right-click the yahoo!mail logo and choose Open Link in New Tab
• right-click the yahoo!mail logo and choose Open Link in New Window

In this scenario, I can open and view a message in the new tab/window without any rude surprises, but if I open a message and download an attachment, then at some point thereafter, the new tab/window is closed.

Scenario B: Open a single message in a second tab or a new window. Either:

• Shift+right-click the message in the Inbox and click Open Link in New Tab
• Shift+right-click the message in the Inbox and click Open Link in New Window

Same here: I can view the message without any rude surprises, but if I download an attachment, then at some point thereafter, the new tab/window is closed.

Can you tell whether you have Yahoo mail open in a different tab? If you type or paste %yahoo in the address bar, Firefox should list all the open Yahoo tabs. You could scan the list to see whether there is another mail tab open which may be the master tab that stays open.

How to allow a second Yahoo! Mail tab to stay open?

I'm doubtful that Firefox is deciding to close the tab for its own reasons because (A) there is an inexplicable delay after the download is completed and (B) it doesn't happen on other sites.

But how could Yahoo! control this? Perhaps a script in the page itself is closing the tab when it was launched from another Yahoo tab. To test that, I tried these methods to open the second window/tab in a completely independent way:

• press Ctrl+T to launch a new tab, type mail.yahoo.com in the address bar and press Enter to load it (Ctrl+clicking a bookmark should also work)
• press Ctrl+N to launch a new window, type mail.yahoo.com in the address bar and press Enter to load it (Shift+clicking a bookmark should also work)

Neither of those got closed after opening a message and downloading an attachment.

That's what I've discovered so far. It's not satisfactory that Yahoo is allowed to close a tab when it wants to. Normally, scripts in pages were only allowed to close their tab if the tab was launched using a script. Since the links were launched in a second tab/window by me using Firefox's link context menu, I didn't think the page would be allowed to close its tab in that case. Something seems to have changed.

I tried to open Yahoo mail in a new tab by Ctrl+clicking a bookmark. Opening a message with attachment, downloading the attachment caused the new tab to close (after about 30 seconds). It did not matter whether there is another open Yahoo mail tab or not. Also, any other open Yahoo tabs (not mail) did not matter.

However, after closing all Yahoo tabs, and creating two new tabs loading them with Yahoo! and Yahoo mail, I could download attachments without problems.

I'll observe the situation during the next few days (and restarts).

I tried to open Yahoo mail in a new tab by Ctrl+clicking a bookmark. Opening a message with attachment, downloading the attachment caused the new tab to close (after about 30 seconds). It did not matter whether there is another open Yahoo mail tab or not. Also, any other open Yahoo tabs (not mail) did not matter. However, after closing all Yahoo tabs, and creating two new tabs loading them with Yahoo! and Yahoo mail, I could download attachments without problems. I'll observe the situation during the next few days (and restarts).

Thank you for the report.

Thanks jscher2000 and hako2. I can confirm that opening Yahoo in a second tab using ctrl+click on a bookmark does result in a mail window that works correctly, and doesn't close itself. While that tab is open, using the first tab still results in the defect described.

But reassigning the Home tabs to include only the second Yahoo tab, closing Firefox and reopening, results in the defective action again. Similarly, having 2 Yahoo tabs in the Home tabs setting, then closing and reopening Firefox, both instances are defective, closing 30 seconds after clicking to download the attachment.

Jscher2000: I was unable to test your "%yahoo" URL because I could not find a way to prevent Google returning a search results page.

Thanks to all for suggestions. I tried opening my Yahoo mail tab with ctrl+click on a bookmark as foodie2 recounts above, and the behavior was unaffected: about 30 seconds after downloading an attachment the tab closes.

I've simply given up on using Firefox for Yahoo at this point. When I use Edge (or any other browser), the strange behavior doesn't occur. Still left wondering if this is Yahoo's fault, or Firefox's fault...would sure appreciate a fix in any case.

It sounds like there is some additional factor besides being a second tab/window that allows Yahoo to close itself. Need to think on it more and hear more experiments.

A bit more info: clearing cookies fixes the problem, but closing and reopening Firefox brings the problem back again immediately.

This is what I did:

1. %yahoo showed me a couple of Yahoo tabs, the portal Yahoo!, the mail tab, but also some not directly Yahoo-related sites which have been opened a long time ago (probably with Yahoo as referrer).
2. After closing all of these tabs, %yahoo did not show any Yahoo tabs anymore.
3. After restarting Firefox, I created two new tabs and loaded the portal de.yahoo.com and Yahoo mail into them (from bookmarks).

Since then, The PC (and Firefox) got restarted several times. So far, the closing mail tab problem did not occur again.

Hi hako2, thank you for your reply. Because it contained a link to Yahoo, it went into the link spam moderation queue for review, but it should become visible here soon.

Hi hako2, jscher2000, thanks for experimenting. Please explain how to do the "%yahoo" part - no matter what I do I can only get a google search. I have tried in about:config toggling keyword.enabled to false (amongst many other suggestions) but it makes no discernable difference. I don't seem to be able to force the address box to not allow a search action.

Hi foodie, just type "%yahoo" into the address line. Don't type cr nor click on the arrow. (see attached screenshot, I have 2 Yahoo tabs open)

Aaah! I got it. Thanks.

This issue can be caused by corrupted cookies or cookies that are blocked. Clear the Cache and remove the Cookies from websites that cause problems. "Clear the Cache": Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Network > Cached Web Content: "Clear Now"

Regards, Will

Hi willjoe24421, Thanks, but my Firefox (108.0.2) doesn't have an 'Edit > Preferences...' menu - not sure where you got that. However, I think I achieved the same goal by following Settings > Privacy & Security > Cookies and Site Data > Manage Data, and discovered hundreds of sites storing data and cookies. I Removed All and rebooted - no luck! Yahoo tab still closes 30 seconds after clicking on an email attachment download icon.

Hi foodie2, my Firefox for Ubuntu has version 109.0b2. I get to it by edit > settings > privacy & security > cookies and site data > clear all, see attachment. Executing that and restarting Firefox, I had to log into several sites again. So far, I can download from Yahoo mail without issues.

Hi willjoe24421, Thanks, but my Firefox (108.0.2) doesn't have an 'Edit > Preferences...' menu - not sure where you got that. However, I think I achieved the same goal by following Settings > Privacy & Security > Cookies and Site Data > Manage Data, and discovered hundreds of sites storing data and cookies. I Removed All and rebooted - no luck! Yahoo tab still closes 30 seconds after clicking on an email attachment download icon.

So far, I think the only way to prevent the tab closing is to open the Inbox directly in a new tab or window. By directly I mean typing or pasting mail.yahoo.com in the address bar and pressing Enter to load that, or perhaps using a bookmark to that page.

Jscher2000, Thanks, that does seem to work. I'll use that temporarily, but sadly we can't call it a solution, there's obviously still a bug somewhere, and we will have to hope that someone can put all this evidence together and come up with the fix. Regards.

I followed hako2 suggestion...

1. %yahoo showed Yahoo Mail (YM) and Yahoo Fantasy Football (YFF) tabs open, but in separate windows. 2. I closed the %yahoo tabs then restarted Firefox. 3. I typed "mail.yahoo.com" in a new tab and now downloading mail attachments does not cause YM to crash. I've also opened a YFF tab, in another window, and this does not cause the crash problem.

FYI, I had not closed the YFF tab since I opened it last August/September. Having this open somehow had an impact on the YM crash. I suspect any Yahoo tab open would have been a problem, not just the YFF tab.

I am using MacOS Monterey 12.6.2

Thanks for investigating everyone!

Thanks Dunecoon. I'm pleased that fixed it for you, and others, but I don't think that applies to my case because I close Firefox and shut down the computer every 2-3 days, and almost never "open previous session", so there can be no spurious Yahoo tabs floating around. It's clear that opening the Yahoo Home page as one of the Firefox 'Home' tabs, then manually going to the 'Mail' page, does work. So how is it that Home tab "https://uk.yahoo.com/" is different from Home tab "https://mail.yahoo.com/d/folders/1?.intl=uk&.lang=en-GB"? What is Firefox taking from the latter URL that causes the subsequent download crash sequence?

For email issue causing the Browser to close or crash maybe you want to contact yahoo email UK and ask them since yahoo isn't a firefox software about this issue if it keeps happening as I use it for email gmail and yahoo email and have no issue.