Google-chrome – Prevent blank tab on PDF download in Google Chrome

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Sometimes when I download a PDF, Chrome will open a new blank tab, how do I prevent this?

Best Answer

The only way to stop the blank page is to use Right Click and Save Link As.

Since Chrome does not natively support an embedded PDF reader it assumes the PDF link is trying to open another page. It then let's the file system take over allowing your PDF reader to open the actual file. It doesn't have any facility to close the new tab that opened as it assumes it is being used for displaying the file.

However there is good news. You can use the Docs Preview Extension to preview all these documents in Chrome and it will stop this behaviour since the files will open in Chrome.

Newer versions of Chrome does support embedded PDF viewing so a lot of this answer is obsolete

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Google Chrome – How to Download Arbitrary Files

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 prevent Chrome from terminating on closing of the last opened tab

On OS X , enable 'Warn Before Quitting' - https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95631 .

On other platforms: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/simplelasttab/ganniadnoflaogjededkdpicdfkloajf

How to enable confirmation alert before closing chrome tabs?

Best Answer

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Google Chrome – How to Download Arbitrary Files

Google-chrome – How to prevent Chrome from terminating on closing of the last opened tab

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