Firefox – How to display PDF outside of browser (download)

By default Firefox will display PDF files inside of the browser using its own PDF rendering.

This can be annoying when you prefer to save documents to a folder before referring to them and reduces the number of options for displaying the PDF.

The following steps show how to change this so that PDF files will automatically download – instead allowing you to safe the file to a folder or open it in your preferred PDF application.

1. With Firefox open, click on the menu icon at the top right of the screen then click on the ‘Options’ button
2. 
3. Click on ‘Applications’ in the left hand menu
4. Search for “PDF”
5. In the list below, change the action for ‘Portable Document Format (PDF)’ to ‘Save File’
6. 
7. You can now close the tab
8. PDF files will now automatically download instead of being displayed inside Firefox – you can now choose to open using your preferred PDF application or simply save the file to a folder.