How to Disable Chrome PDF Viewer and Download PDF Files

If you are looking for a way to disable Chrome PDF Viewer, I wouldn’t blame you. There are so many limitations to it and you are absolutely in this right to think of disabling it. In this guide, we provide the steps by step guide to disable Chrome PDF Viewer for good.

Chrome PDF Viewer is probably the simplest and straight-forward way to view PDF files at the moment. It enables you to easily view the PDF files on your computer without having to install additional software.

But at the same time, it is not for everyone, especially power users. The Chrome PDF viewer is very basic and does not offer many features when compared to other professional PDF tools.

Disable Chrome PDF Viewer and Download PDF Files

The other reason why you may want to disable it is that you do not want to open PDF files on your browser but you want to download PDF files in Chrome. By default, when you click on a link which is a PDF file, Chrome simply opens it in a new tap rather than downloading it for offline usage.

This can get quite annoying if you are looking to download the PDF files. All these problems are because of the fact that the PDF files are set to be opened automatically in Chrome browser by default.

In this article, we are bringing you the latest method by which you can easily disable Chrome PDF Viewer in a matter of minutes.

Disable Chrome PDF Viewer

  1. In your Google Chrome browser, click on the Settings icon at the top right corner (the three vertical dots) and then click on Settings.
  2. Once you are in Settings, scroll down until you see Advanced and click on the same. This will show you some advanced options.disable-chrome-pdf-viewer-1
  3. Scroll down and look for Site Settings and click on the same.disable-chrome-pdf-viewer-2
  4. In the next screen, you will be shown a bunch of options. In this list, look for ‘PDF documents‘ and click on it.disable-chrome-pdf-viewer-3
  5. In the next screen, you will see a property called ‘Download PDF files instead of automatically opening them in Chrome‘. Tap on the button next to it and enable the same.disable-chrome-pdf-viewer-4
  6. Done.
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After completing the above steps, PDF documents will not automatically open in Google Chrome. If you try to open any links that contain PDF files, they will be automatically downloaded by Chrome.

Download PDF Files in Chrome

We hope the above guide helped you in disabling Chrome PDF viewer and thereby help you to download PDF Files in Chrome browser. The PDF viewer option is by default enabled on Google Chrome for all users.

Even some other modern browsers such as Microsoft Edge do the same. But nevertheless, the steps mentioned above should disable Chrome PDF Viewer for good!

If you have trouble with any of the steps above, do let us know in the comments below and we will help you out!

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