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astraldenizen
New member
Status: Delivered

This feature was great, and one of the reasons why I stayed with Firefox when I tried it. From stopping accidental downloads to avoiding malware, being able to choose to keep a download instead of automatically putting it on my device was really helpful, so I suggest adding a toggle(alongside the options for individual files) to choose between asking for all files or auto-downloading. I'd greatly appreciate this change.

54 Comments
Dirksche
Strollin' around

Hi,

I don't like the new/current behaviour.
Firefox is automatically downloading any PDF to the standard "Download" folder (although I've configured it to always ask where to download to) and is also displaying the PDF in a new tab. Why both (downloading and displaying). This doesn't make sense to me.
This is very annoying already for months 😞

I like(d) the fact, that you could configure Firefox to always ask where to download a pdf to, and Firefox remembered the last location that you've used for this server. This is/was a great feature. You can have in you "Downloads" folder different sub-folders for different banks, mobile phone providers, insurances, for Rasberry Pi, for Virtual Box, ... and when you started a download from e.g. https://www.virtualbox.org/, the file dialog went automatically to the Virtual Box folder. This is still true for downloading e.g. executables, but not for PDFs anymore. For PDFs it's already broken for months. They all end up in the standard "Downloads" folder without even asking if I want to download the document or where I want it to be saved. All my Bank, Insurance and Mobile Phone statements end up in the "Downloads" folder and I have to move them manually. This is really annoying!!!

I hope they will fix it soon.

For now, I've changed in about:config the two advanced settings "browser.download.improvements_to_download_panel" to "false" and "browser.download.start_downloads_in_tmp_dir" to "true". I hope I will now have again the behaviour that I used to have until about a year ago.

Best Regards,
Dirk

AndreasK
New member

This was possible but was cancelled / changed recently. See

https://praxistipps.chip.de/firefox-automatische-downloads-deaktivieren-so-klappts_41401

This option isn't awailable anymore. Even you set Firefox to ask before a download starts, it is going to be downloaded to a folder that was choosen years ago. This folder information can't be deleted. Maybe a complete delete of the browser and reinstallation will help.

Nummer_1
New member

I have changed:
browser.download.start_downloads_in_tmp_dir
to true

so FF doesn`t save pdfs to the download folder when i only want to view them.

This FF behaviour is totally sensless in my opinion and should be revised!
I have lots of work to manually sort out unnecessary downloads from download folder and separate them from necessary ones.

vagold1e
New member

I have used firefox for years.  No more.  This downloading every pdf is dangerous for me.  I like to save my bills to a card, not my computer.  With this update to firefox, I get my credit card bill saved to my downloads folder, where I DON'T WANT IT, in spite of asking to save it elsewhere.  I'm on a mac and have not found a work around for this.