Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

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.

Avatar for Username

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

Denc nañu waxtaan wii. Yónneel yeneen laaj soo soxlaa ndimbal.

Firefox stopped opening local pdf files in preview

kazarey
kazarey
more options

Hello,

For some reason Firefox stopped opening local pdf files in the browser preview and started opening window with options to pick a local pdf view, to download pdf etc. It happens I explicitly try to open local pdf files using 'open with' option and picking Firefox - it just doesn't show them inside browser itself.

At the same time, the pdf files from the internet are previewed perfectly fine (for example, when I go to Google Scholar, Firefox previews a pdf inside the browser itself).

What could be the reason? I really need to view local pdf files inside the browser.

Hello, For some reason Firefox stopped opening local pdf files in the browser preview and started opening window with options to pick a local pdf view, to download pdf etc. It happens I explicitly try to open local pdf files using 'open with' option and picking Firefox - it just doesn't show them inside browser itself. At the same time, the pdf files from the internet are previewed perfectly fine (for example, when I go to Google Scholar, Firefox previews a pdf inside the browser itself). What could be the reason? I really need to view local pdf files inside the browser.

All Replies (3)

Modhurima Chowdhury Proma
Modhurima Chowdhury Proma
more options

Read this link help https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/view-pdf-files-firefox-without-downloading-them .

I think it may help you. If it can't help please reply us. thank you sir.

kazarey
kazarey Ki laajte
more options

Dear Proma Chowdhury,

Thank you very much for your reply. Unfortunately, the information on the page didn't solve my issue.

First, I tried to change from 'Preview in Firefox' to 'Use Adobe Acrobat' against 'Portable Document Format (PDF)' in Applications. Now Firefox does use Acrobat inside itself instead of Preview (when viewing PDFs from the internet), but still refuses to open local files inside itself, showing that downloading window.

Deleting mimetypes.rdf didn't bring any effect.

If it is relevant: I first stumbled across this problem because I use Zotero plugin for Firefox which is an accumulator for various articles and papers. Usually, in this plugin one can open a paper, and it would be opened in Firefox itself. But now something happenned, and Firefox does not do so anymore, suggesting to download the paper or choose a local PDF viewer. Then I noticed that I can't open local PDFs in Firefox at all.

the-edmeister
the-edmeister
  • Moderator
more options

How are you trying to open those saved PDF files?

File > Open File ... from within Firefox should work, when "Preview in Firefox" is set for the "Action" in Options > Applications.

Directly opening a PDF file from the file system folder where it is saved basically turns opening that file over to the operating system. bypassing Firefox.

As far as how Zotero might affect what you're having happen, I have no idea - never used Zotero. So you may want to check with Zotero support for help with that issue.