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How to open PDF files on Android?

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Every time I click on a link to a .pdf file, it briefly redirects to the Pdf Viewer (I think from Google Drive) before returning to the Firefox application. The file does not show up in my download folder. It's kind of annoying because every time I need to view a PDF, I need to use Chrome and sign in each time (since it's not my primary browser)

Every time I click on a link to a .pdf file, it briefly redirects to the Pdf Viewer (I think from Google Drive) before returning to the Firefox application. The file does not show up in my download folder. It's kind of annoying because every time I need to view a PDF, I need to use Chrome and sign in each time (since it's not my primary browser)

All Replies (2)

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Hi Anahita Gupta, I'm not sure what is going on there!

If the link is on a Google site, perhaps they have a specially coded link that works differently from other sites? I wonder whether long-pressing the link would give you an option to save the file and bypass whatever else is going on.

If this happens regardless of the source of the PDF, then maybe the Google Drive PDF viewer is the default app for PDFs on your device? This article has the steps to clear that:

https://www.lifewire.com/set-and-clear-android-default-apps-3886190

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Thanks for your reply!

However, I downloaded a different Adobe's PDF viewer and it still does not work. The error message that comes up is "The file could not be downloaded. Please save the file to your local storage and then try to open it."

This has been happening ever since I started using Firefox on Android (a couple of years now).