Disable PDF viewing in Firefox

You’re happily surfing, and you realized too late that one of the URLs you’ve clicked was actually a PDF document. You hate it. It takes a long time to load, makes your browser hang, or confuses so much with the toolbars that you unknowingly close your browser.

There is a way for you to disable in-browser viewing of PDF files. Instead of automatically opening the PDF document in your browser, you will be asked if you want to save the document in your computer instead. Definitely a much better alternative.

  1. In Firefox, open the Options window by going to Tools > Options from the menu.
  2. Select Download.

  3. Click the View & Edit Actions button. The Download Actions window will appear. In here, you will see a list of file extensions, and the “action” associated with it — meaning, for each of the file extension listed, there is a corresponding browser plug-in which will run the file extension.
  4. Select PDF, then click on the Change Action button.
  5. Then select Save them on my computer.
  6. Click OK.

8 thoughts on “Disable PDF viewing in Firefox”

  1. i did this already just wanted to know how i can do this also in windows explorer… it still opens pdf suddenly..i dont want that

  2. I doubt if it will work in IE helen. Even the disable addons doesn\’t work (I tried). I really think it is Adobe\’s fault. They should have just made this configurable so it is easy to disable.

  3. Instead of automatically opening the PDF document in your browser, you will be asked if you want to save the document in your computer instead. Definitely a much better alternative.

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