MacOS – How to specify Firefox ‘open file’ location

firefoxmacospath

Firefox documentation specifies that when you click a link to download a file and select 'open', that it downloads it to a temp folder. While this is true on a Windows system, it is not in Yosemite. It automatically downloads to my Downloads folder, just the same as if I told it to download without opening.

the firefox documentation that says 'open with' saves to a tmp location is found at the following link:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/change-firefox-behavior-when-open-file

the idea is that when the dialog box pops up for a clicked link:
example file
If I choose 'open with' and the selected application opens the file, it is saved to a temp location, whereas selecting 'save file' then automatically goes to downloads… or however else I choose to set it in the preferences of firefox.

the firefox documentations say that 'open with' goes to temp folder, but that is apparently only true on a windows operating system, not osx. If it's a big hackjob to fix this, i'll forget it, but if there's some 'about:config' line I can mod or something, that would be great. I've looked and found nothing quite obvious as of yet.

Best Answer

  1. Open Firefox preferences
  2. Select the "General" tab
  3. In the "Downloads" section set the "Save files to" to be whatever folder you want all your downloads go to. Alternatively, you can choose the "Always ask me where to save files" option to have it always prompt you where to save the file.