Of course, you can also hold down the option key then click on a PDF download link (or any other link, for that matter) and Safari will download the file, but this method will make the behavior automatic. To display PDFs using the shareware utility PDF Browser Plugin, simply download the file and drag PDF Browser Plugin to /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/, then restart your Web browser.įorcing Safari to download PDFs This process will force Safari to download a PDF automatically when accessed rather then attempting to display it with a plug-in or the built-in PDF display mechanism.Failing this, navigate to /Library/Internet Plug-Ins (the Library folder at the root level of your hard drive) and remove the file ugin, then restart Safari.

Make sure that the option 'Display PDF in browser using:' is not checked, then restart Safari.

To display PDFs using the built-in WebKit PDF viewer for Safari, open Adobe Reader (located in /Applications) and select 'Preferences' from the 'Adobe Reader' menu.

Make sure that the option 'Display PDF in browser using:' is checked. Open Adobe Reader (located in /Applications) and select 'Preferences' from the 'Adobe Reader' menu.

To display PDFs using the Adobe PDF Viewer, make sure that you have the latest version of Adobe Reader installed (the installer will automatically install the Adobe PDF Viewer at /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/ugin).

Force your Web browser to download the PDF for viewing in Adobe Reader, Preview, or another PDF reading application.ĭisplaying the PDF in your browser window Controlling which tool displays your PDF within the browser window is relatively easy.

Display the PDF in the browser window with the aid of either Safari's built-in PDF display, the Adobe PDF Viewer Plug-in, or a shareware utility like PDF Browser Plugin.

There are two basic alternatives for viewing PDFs from the Web, with variations: Options are generally hidden within specific applications rather than accessible via universal system controls, and it's sometimes not clear how to invoke given options. Less than intuitive are the controls for determining how PDFs accessed through Safari and other Web browsers are displayed.

How to open a pdf in preview