Comments on: PDF files left by Firefox on Mac OS X Desktop

By: alex

alex — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 15:57:58 +0000

Not sure why Michael thinks that someone is trying to break the MAC, because I use WinXP and I had exactly the same problem, except that my files would pile up unknowingly to me in the Temp folder, which is even worse.
Tip of my hat for your tip sir.

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 22:42:12 +0000

Firefox does know whether you chose to open the file or to save it to disk. On systems other than OS X, if you open a downloaded file instead of saving it, it puts the file in a temporary folder. The contents of that folder get deleted on reboot.

I looked at the Firefox source code, and some cretin thought we Mac users wanted it to work differently than it does on Windows and Linux. He was wrong.

All it would take to fix this is to delete about 50 lines of special source code written just to break the Mac. I tried to do that on my own machine, but I couldn’t figure out how to rebuild FF.

Actually it should be a simple about:config variable that says where it gets saved, so you can put it in a different temporary folder for each user.

This complaint has been around for years, and Mozilla still hasn’t fixed it.

BTW, getting it to download to a download folder instead of the Desktop is a simple Preferences setting. The issue is to get Open With to use a different folder than Save.

By: John

John — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 22:49:24 +0000

I followed your instructions for changing the “Save downloaded files to:” in Safari, but it hasn’t made a difference in where either Firefox or Thunderbird save the temporary files. You advice on adding the config entry for deleteTempFileOnExit works great, however. And since the Mozilla apps seem to prevent name collision, I shouldn’t have to worry about it deleting something I want to keep. So at this point, it’s gone from a major hassle to a minor annoyance.

THANKS!

By: PaulZag

PaulZag — Sun, 24 May 2009 06:19:22 +0000

You’re welcome. Thanks for the note.

@Maff yes the files stick around until you close Firefox. That’s why I recommend setting a temporary directory so they don’t clutter the desktop. Actually that’s how it’s designed, because Firefox has no way of knowing when you’re finished with the file so it keeps it until you close firefox, then it clears the temporary directory.

By: Matt

Matt — Sat, 23 May 2009 16:14:57 +0000

That was very helpful, just what I was looking for… and other sites didn’t seem to have a fix that actually worked. This is probably obvious, but note that you’ll still see the files on your desktop temporarily, even if you exit the PDF viewer — it’s not until Firefox exits that they get deleted. Thanks so much.

By: kris

kris — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 13:54:44 +0000

Thanks, this was very helpful. My wife’s mac is cluttered with a neverending pile of garbage from firefox. This might just take care of it.