Stop PDFs from displaying inside Google Chrome

Question

When I click on a PDF link in Chrome, it opens automatically inside the browser window. How can I get it to download instead and open with an external viewer?

Update: I implemented djhowell's solution but Chrome still seems to be handling PDF files differently from regular files. When I click a PDF link it opens in Adobe Reader, but normally files download to a folder first.

I also find it weird that this is controlled by Reader and not Chrome. Are there not any file-type controls in Chrome anywhere?

Answer 1

You can disable the Adobe plugin in Chrome, which will force Chrome to download the PDF.

It's under Settings > Privacy and security > Site Settings > PDF documents. Or enter chrome://settings/content/pdfDocuments in your browser address bar to go straight there.

Answer 2

browse to chrome://plugins and disable Chrome PDF Viewer

Answer 3

Are you using Adobe Acrobat/Adobe Reader to display the PDFs? If so, it is probably Abode's behavior you need to modify.

Here are the steps I had to take:

1. Open Adobe Reader
2. Edit menu, Preferences
3. Select Internet from the Categories list
4. Uncheck Display PDF in browser
5. Press OK

If you are using another application to view PDFs the steps are likely similar.

Re: Update

By any chance do you have both Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat installed? You may have to repeat the above steps in the other application.

Chrome is a little weird in that its default behavior is to download everything and make you open it yourself. When you click a PDF link do you see the filename in the "download bar" along the bottom of the window? If so, try right-clicking on it and un-check "Always open files of this type" if it is checked.

Answer 4

In Google-Chrome: open a new tab, go to about:plugins and disable "Chrome PDF Viewer". This seems to have done the trick for me.

Answer 5

Another option is that Chrome, instead of downloading PDF's, launches them in the system defined PDF Reader.

The way to stop it is in the Content Settings in Chrome's Settings:

Answer 6

Kind of sorted this; I uninstalled Adobe Reader and installed SumatraPDF instead! Much better and lightweight app.

Answer 7

that depends on your default PDF reader, for Adobe try this:

Edit > Preferences > Internet

clear the box Display PDF in Browser

Answer 8

Edit: as pointed by @Tanath in the comments, this method not seems to work anymore!

To me seems that the desired behavior was to be able to save the files instead of open them in another application, so, I think a more accurate answer should be:

Press and Hold down the Alt (Meta) key in your keyboard while you click in the PDF link.

Answer 9

How about pressing CTRL + S and saving the file after it opens it? Works ok if you are not into downloading a lot of PDF's

Answer 10

According to Adobe's page on displaying PDFs in various browsers, in order to have Chrome not open the PDF within the browser, after you've opened a new tab to chrome://plugins, you'll need to shift-click "Disable" on the currently enabled plug-in to display PDFs.

Otherwise, it will still open in the browser, it just uses different plug-ins to display it.

To have Chrome download PDFs instead of displaying them in the browser, shift-click Disable for the currently enabled viewer. This leaves both viewer plug-ins disabled so the PDFs won't display in the browser.

Once you do this, it will download the PDF, instead of opening it within Chrome.

Answer 11

The following worked for me:

1. Go to chrome://settings/
2. Click + Show advanced setting

3. in Downloads

   3a. check 'Ask where to save each file before downloading'

   3b. click on the button Clear auto-open settings

Note: 3b is fundamental to override the fact that PDFs are handled differently from other files.

Background: this happened to me as well because once I downloaded a pdf file, clicked on the small arrow next to the file in the download bar at the bottom, and choose 'always open with system viewer'. Since then, PDF files were saved in the "Download" folder and opened directly.

Answer 12

The actual problem is not that you have a PDF extension, it is that at one point you checked the box that said "always open with system viewer" it is very easy to do by mistake.

To fix this (for Chrome) you need to go into settings and in the search bar, search: "auto-open" then under the downloads section you will notice a button that states "Clear auto-opening settings", click that (a couple times, just to make sure) and that's it, now the files will just download and be sitting in your downloads section/file. Screenshot of Chrom Settings_Clear Auto-Open

Answer 13

As per the new settings in the Chrome Version 59.0.3071.115 (Official Build) (64-bit):

Settings> Advanced Options> Privacy and Security (Look under this)> Content Settings> PDF Documents> Open PDF using a different application

Answer 14

I was looking for a code-side solution, not a browser solution. Turn out, just had to change my POST to a GET. Worked like a charm. Then Chrome didn't give me any more trouble with PDF downloading.

Answer 15

This is a 2024 updated answer (Chrome version 122), and is not Windows or Adobe-specific.

The question is very old, and with mostly outdated answers, but asking it again would trigger a duplicate I guess.

So:

First, right-clicking a pdf listed in the downloads list, we have the option to open in external reader anyway, on a per-case basis:

Note that there is another option there to "always" open in external reader. But that is overridden by the options at chrome://settings/content/pdfDocuments.

On the other hand, in later versions of Chrome, the pdf options at chrome://settings/content/pdfDocuments have changed:

None of the two options alone is enough to trigger the opening of pdf files in the external reader, but the "Download PDF" should be enabled in order for the downloads list right-click context menu option "Always open with system viewer" to be respected.

Otherwise, the context-menu option "Always open with system viewer" may be ignored. Without that context-menu option, enabling the "Download pdf" option will simply re-download the same file!

I expect the odd behavior to be corrected in future releases, so that enabling "Always open with system viewer" would automatically correspond to "Download pdf" at chrome://settings/content/pdfDocuments — and vice versa.