A close look at Firefox 91's new file download opening behavior

Mozilla plans to change the file download opening behavior in Firefox 91. Up until now, Firefox users may choose to save or open files that they want to download. Saving puts the files into the default download folder, and there are options to change the save folder.

Opening on the other hand saved the file into the temporary folder of the system; this does not affect the initial opening of the file, say a torrent file in qBittorrent, a video in the default media player, or an image in an image viewer. Files are deleted automatically when the session ends and that led to problems for users who wanted to open the downloaded file again.

Starting in Firefox 91, Firefox uses a different logic when it comes to the opening of file downloads. We reviewed part of the ne behavior in June, namely that Firefox will save all files to the downloads folder regardless of whether users select the save option or the open option.

One consequence of the new behavior is that downloads that are opened are not deleted anymore automatically. It is necessary now to clear these downloads manually.

That is not the only change though. Firefox 91 will introduce functionality to open files from the download panel. The download panel displays all downloads, active, failed or completed, of the session. If you run Firefox 90 or earlier, you may have noticed that you cannot click on a download that is in progress to get the file opened as soon as the download completes.

Firefox 91 introduces that option: just click on the download and Firefox will display the remaining time before the file is opened on the system.

Enable or disable Firefox's new downloading behavior

Many features can be customized in Firefox. If you dislike the new downloading behavior, e.g. when you want files that get opened to be deleted automatically once the session closes, then you may configure Firefox to do so.

Here is how that is done:

1. Load about:config in the Firefox address bar.
2. Confirm that you will be careful on the warning page.
3. Search for browser.download.improvements_to_download_panel.
   1. Set the value to TRUE to enable the new download behavior.
   2. Set the value to FALSE to disable the new download behavior.

It is possible that the preference may be removed at one point in time. For now, it is available and you may use it to configure the behavior in the web browser.

Closing Words

The change brings Firefox's downloading behavior in line with that of the Chromium browsers. Firefox users who prefer the classic option may restore it once the change lands in the browser.

A close look at Firefox 91's new file download opening behavior