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PDF Viewer is completely inaccessible

  • 2 replies
  • 5 have this problem
  • 12 views
  • Last reply by seakook

watrammell
watrammell
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Firefox for Android can't seem to find its internal PDF viewer in its recent versions.

The expected behavior should be, when opening a PDF file from any source, to prompt the user for the app they want to open it with when a default isn't set (works as intended) with apps such as Firefox, Chrome, Google Drive's native viewer, among other possibilities. When the disk path to the file is entered into the address bar, Firefox should automatically open the file natively.

The actual behavior is that all *but* Firefox is listed in the prompt, nor can I it be found in the device settings. It is reasonable that it's an issue with Android, so I will open a thread with Google as well. When the disk path to the file is entered into the address bar, the user is incorrectly asked to download the file again. (???)


Firefox Daylight 83.1.0 (Build #2015776401) AC: 63.0.9, fc54c566e GV: 83.0-20201112153044 AS: 63.0.0


Samsung Galaxy A11 Kernel version: 4.9.186 Android 10 One UI Core 2.1

This bug is very disconcerting; Being able to do it all from the browser was one of the biggest things I loved about Firefox for mobile, particularity with reading PDFs; it was the only reason I switched from the Google default!

Firefox for Android can't seem to find its internal PDF viewer in its recent versions. The expected behavior should be, when opening a PDF file from any source, to prompt the user for the app they want to open it with when a default isn't set (works as intended) with apps such as Firefox, Chrome, Google Drive's native viewer, among other possibilities. When the disk path to the file is entered into the address bar, Firefox should automatically open the file natively. The actual behavior is that all *but* Firefox is listed in the prompt, nor can I it be found in the device settings. It is reasonable that it's an issue with Android, so I will open a thread with Google as well. When the disk path to the file is entered into the address bar, the user is incorrectly asked to download the file again. (???) Firefox Daylight 83.1.0 (Build #2015776401) AC: 63.0.9, fc54c566e GV: 83.0-20201112153044 AS: 63.0.0 Samsung Galaxy A11 Kernel version: 4.9.186 Android 10 One UI Core 2.1 This bug is very disconcerting; Being able to do it all from the browser was one of the biggest things I loved about Firefox for mobile, particularity with reading PDFs; it was the only reason I switched from the Google default!

All Replies (2)

Paul
Paul
  • Top 25 Contributor
  • Moderator
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Hi

Firefox for Android does not currently have a built in .pdf viewer, but this is something that we may look at for a future update.

seakook
seakook
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So I also am frustrated by the inability of Firefox for Android (v86) to open a .pdf web address with the Android built-in PDF Viewer directly (ie without having to select a train of menu selections). It seems it should be a reasonable fix to have a setting preferance that allows the Firefox browser to open web address .pdf files in the Android "PDF Viewer" app. (There had been a nice Add-on for this, but new "Firefox for Android" does not support this highly useful feature.) I regularly visit a site that links to a frequently updated .pdf document. I don't need to download it really, I just need to view the document, then close it or refresh.