Hello. Go to the next section headed Applications and choose the action you want for each type of file you download. I believe you want "Always ask".

Hello. Go to the next section headed Applications and choose the action you want for each type of file you download. I believe you want "Always ask".

It took me a while to reply at your suggestion but something went wrong through the system and it got lost...anyway, nope that's not what I was asking for..thx anyway Terry...

P.S. If the Admins could recoup my last reply that wold be awsome...thx

There always needs to be a default download location set as for instance this is used to save a screenshot in some cases and is also used for storing files you open in an external application unless you override this to the OS temp folder.

Hi Alex, this is a bit nerdy, but where Firefox saves a PDF when displaying it in a tab depends on instructions from the server:

Background: inline vs. attachment disposition

If web servers don't specify how Firefox should handle a PDF, or if they specify "inline" handling, then then Firefox loads the PDF as web content with its original URL in the address bar. The PDFs are saved with other cached web content, not in your download folder. This is good.

But web servers can try to force a download by setting Content-Disposition: attachment if they don't want browsers to show the files in a tab. Firefox changed what it does in this case:

Before Firefox 98: Firefox always showed a download dialog, even though you had already told Firefox what you wanted to do, even when you checked the box to always do this in the future. It was kind of infuriating.

Firefox 98+: Firefox downloads the file automatically and then opens it. Because these are saved to disk the URLs start with file:///. By default, they are saved in your "Save files to" folder on the Settings page.

New option for saving PDFs

In response to user suggestions/complaints, Mozilla added an option to modify the above: When your handling action is "Open in Firefox", all PDFs can now be opened as web content and saved in the cache instead of a regular folder. Here's how you set this up:

(a) 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. I'm using this so I feel comfortable mentioning it.

(b) In the search box in the page, type or paste browser.download.open_pdf_attachments_inline and pause while the list is filtered -- requires Firefox 103 or later

(c) Double-click the preference to switch the value from false to true

Success?

Thanks every1 for the suggestions but I was asking why I can't simply chose when and where to save a pdf that is on screen. I mean if I chose option 2, option 1 should be gray out...it's that simple really... As previously said, right now if I open a PDF on screen, it is automatically saved on my dektop and then it opens the "Always ask.." window..it's bizarre as behaviour ...shouldn't be so complicated... Anyway..I can see that Mozilla Support Staff doesn't care much even just to answer a simple querie...so thank anyway to all you guys trying to help and we can close this 3D now...

Enter about:config in the address bar and set browser.download.start_downloads_in_tmp_dir = true.

Alex said

As previously said, right now if I open a PDF on screen, it is automatically saved on my dektop and then it opens the "Always ask.." window..it's bizarre as behaviour ...shouldn't be so complicated...

Enter about:config in the address bar and set browser.download.start_downloads_in_tmp_dir = true.

Yes, this will solve the problem of Firefox using your Desktop as temporary storage for files you are downloading. (I thought you were using "Open in Firefox" for PDFs, so I gave you the other setting.)

I have this issue too. It seem that if you select the option in Application/Action to something other than "Save file", then the file is saved first to the default location before performing the action specified.

So in this particular instance, if you have PDF actions set to "Use Windows default application" it will save the file to the default location and then open it. It will not ask first where to save it, even when you have this option selected.

I suspect you and I are both thinking "I want to download it directly to its permanent storage location, then open it and read it", but firefox doesn't comprehend/allow this.

Did you set browser.download.start_downloads_in_tmp_dir = true on the about:config page?

You can open the about:config page via the location/address bar. On the warning page, you can click "Accept the Risk and Continue" to open about:config.

• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/about-config-editor-firefox

When you open a file it is considered a "temporary" download and gets saved in the default location (formerly the temp folder). If you want to save to a specific location, you will need to save the file instead of open it. You can click on a file while it is downloading to open it when finished.