this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023
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Finally found a fix how to stop firefox downloading each PDF to your local drive (connect.mozilla.org)
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Hey guys

Today I got so annyed by firefox's default behaviour of downloading each and every PDF file to my disk that I went searching for a solution until I had the problem fixed. And it seems like I have finally found it. I have linked the solution but here is the fix in short:

  1. go to about:config
  2. change browser.download.open_pdf_attachments_inline to true

Thank you jscher2000 for the solution!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/9785046

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

PDFs are particularly annoying like that. On one hand most browsers offer to open them in the browser, but on the other hand it's a "file" rather than a document. Imagine if your browser decided to download all the HTML webpages that you visit to your download folder, instead of the temporary cache. That's how PDFs are handled.

To make it more complicated, sometimes you'll want that and other times you don't.

It's also really annoying in terms of GDPR compliance, because some users gather a lot of PDFs in their download folder without even realising it. I empty my download folder daily, just like the trashcan, just to be sure that I'm not keeping things that I'm not supposed to keep. This is only/mainly due to the browsers handling of the PDF format.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Excuse my ignorance but what chapter / section of the GDPR deals with end users downloading pdfs?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

All of it, if the PDF contains personal information. Anything that can identify a person is personal information and can only be kept if the person has constented to you keeping it.

It does not matter in which format or where. That includes files in your download or trash can folders.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Respectfully, that's not true. GDPR Article 2(2)(c):

  1. This Regulation does not apply to the processing of personal data: (c) by a natural person in the course of a purely personal or household activity;
[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I'm obviously talking about work and not my porn stash.