Stop Browser Download from Opening Automatically

All Chromium (an open-source browser project) based internet browsers (such as Google Chrome, Brave, Firefox and Microsoft Edge) allow for the automatic opening of a downloaded file. For example, upon downloading a .jpg image you can select to have all future .jpg images open automatically upon download.

This may come in handy for certain file types. However, this feature is most often triggered accidentally, (at least in my case). To make matters worse, there is no opportunity to undo or reverse this option from the frontend. Not to worry, within this short article I will cover how you can disable this if you no longer need to automatically open your downloaded files upon completion.

Stop Downloads from Opening

To stop a download from opening automatically in Google Chrome, Brave, Firefox or Microsoft Edge visit the browsers’ “Settings” area by clicking on the three vertical dots at the top right corner of your browsers window.

Using the search bar at the top of the Settings page, search for “open certain” which will display the “Open certain file types automatically after downloading” option under Downloads.

Click the “CLEAR” button towards the right side of that option row which will reset ALL download options. Note: At present, there is no way to choose which ones to save and which to remove.

From now on any downloaded files will not automatically open upon completion.

Conclusion

I welcome your thoughts, questions or suggestions on my article on how to stop a browser download from opening automatically.

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