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.

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

mp3 download

more options

When trying to download a college lecture, instead of downloading, the file opens and runs in a new tab. In General Settings "Save files to" is set to "Downloads" and "MP3 file (audio/mp3)" is set to Save File. This worked fine for several years until the last few months. It currently works correctly in my Chrome browser, but I prefer using Firefox.

When trying to download a college lecture, instead of downloading, the file opens and runs in a new tab. In General Settings "Save files to" is set to "Downloads" and "MP3 file (audio/mp3)" is set to Save File. This worked fine for several years until the last few months. It currently works correctly in my Chrome browser, but I prefer using Firefox.

All Replies (1)

more options

This is normal for certain kinds of media. Does the page allow using right-click > Save Link As to download the MP3? If not, you can disable playing media in a stand-alone tab as a workaround; it will still play in a player embedded in a page. Here's how:

(1) 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.

(2) In the search box in the page, type or paste media.play-stand-alone and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the preference (or click the toggle button at the right end of the row) to switch the value from true to false

If you later need to play audio or video in a stand-alone tab, you'll need to reverse the change. A reset button will be available at the right end of the row, or you can double-click/toggle again.