Chrome view pdf without downloading

However when I click on a pdf file link, chrome offers to download it instead of opening it inside its viewer. Edit: I have found that it behaves kinda randomly. Sometimes it does open it inside its viewer and sometimes it asks to download it. Download a PDF file, then when it is done, left click on the download icon at the bottom and select "always open this type of file" Now It should open any PDF link you click in that window without downloading it to a permanent location.

I also have the box ticked, "ask where to save each file before download", not sure if this has any affect on the behavior of automatically opening a file. There may be some PDFs that chrome cannot display properly, so it offers you to download it to view with another PDF viewer. It is not a full featured viewer like Foxit or Adobe. I use it this way and can find no PDF that chrome has saved, it has to cache it somewhere to read it, but I am not sure where it does.

If it is set to "inline", it will auto-open if configured accordingly. If it is set to "attachment", Chrome will offer to save it, regardless of other configurations.

In other words, behavior will vary from site to site, just like you're describing. I don't know, however, if and how it could be made to open the PDF in any case; I'm afraid this might not be possible. The ability to auto-open PDFs was disabled in recent versions of Chrome. The developers re-implemented the feature and it is available again in Chrome 10 and above.

See this bug report for details. If you need to, restart chrome for it to take effect. Should be good to go. No need to download anything.

It's a quick fix. Open Chrome browser 2. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group.

Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. How to open pdf in Chrome's integrated viewer without downloading it Ask Question. Asked 10 years, 11 months ago. Active 4 years, 3 months ago. Viewed k times. How do i get it to open pdfs inside its viewer?

In gmail though it always asks to download it. Note: I already have the 'ask where to save each file before downloading' option unchecked. Improve this question. Do the reverse of this - superuser. Add a comment.

Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. However, that is not the case with Google Chrome sometimes. Thus, the customization of this popular web browser needs to be done in certain cases to make it work that way. The student who came to SupportWare with a similar query was guided with the following instructions to make sure that PDFs are first opened on his Chrome browser without compulsion download. Open a document web link on the browser. This way, the browser will begin to display PDFs and not download automatically.

Once Enabled, the plugin will look like how it is shown below. Now open the same document link or any other document web link on the browser. You will notice that this time Google Chrome opens and displays the document on the browser window and does not begin downloading it.

Below, you can see a number of options: enlarge the document page, change the pages back and forth, zoom in and zoom out, save the document, and print it directly from the browser. This is how one can know how to get PDFs to open in Chrome browser without having to download them.