Google-chrome – How to instruct Chrome to download PDF rather than (pre)view in browser

downloadgoogle-chromepdf

I have PDF file for download by users on my website.

Is there a way to instruct Chrome not to view the PDF in the users browser when the user clicks the link to the PDF, but instead download the PDF to the users download folder instead? Or at least instruct Chrome to ask the user whether he wants to view the PDF in the browser or download it (rather than just viewing in browser automatically) ?

Thanks 🙂

Best Answer

You could use the download property in your link (anchor) like so:

<a href="some/path/somefile.pdf" download target="_blank">download PDF file</a>

This would force download in the browsers, which support it (Chrome, Firefox and Opera). However, it is not currently supported in IE or Safari as per this link

Source: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3802510/force-to-open-save-as-popup-open-at-text-link-click-for-pdf-in-html

Related Solutions

Chrome – Download arbitrary file with Google Chrome

Right click the link and click "Save Link As..."

EDIT: To follow up on the need to download arbitrarily from clipboard, I would just create a generic HTML file and use the above solution. Save as mylink.html to file system somewhere. Open in Chrome.

<html>
<a href="http://www.mycompany.com/secretvideo.mp4">Link</a>
</html>

Google-chrome – How to manage the download location, by file types, in Chrome

I recently put together a Chrome extension called Downloads Router that does exactly this -- based on MIME type rather than file extension, though. It also allows for routing based on source domain (e.g. files from iconfinder.com goes to images/icons/ instead of images/).

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Chrome – Download arbitrary file with Google Chrome

Google-chrome – How to manage the download location, by file types, in Chrome

Related Question