How to easily disable download panel automatic opening in Firefox

Finally, Mozilla Firefox allows users to disable the automatic opening of the download Panel that pops up when you start a download, here is how you can do that without the need to dig into about:config interface.

With Firefox 98 release, Mozilla made notable changes to the download behavior. To mention a couple of them, Firefox shows a download panel pop-up for each download and it no longer saves downloads to the temporary folder by default. We’ve covered how to undo download panel changes here.

disable automatic opening of download Panel Firefox

While there is a way to avoid download panel permanent visibility by changing about:config pref, it’s neither intuitive nor straightforward for the user to follow.

The company had thought of offering a UI option in the download panel right context menu itself after user complaints and feedback. This has now been done with Firefox 102.

Before we explore the easy option, first, let us see about:config method

Open a new tab, type about:config in the address bar
Hit the checkbox and click “Accept the Risk and continue“
in the Search bar, type or paste browser.download.alwaysOpenPanel
in the filtered results, click on the toggle icon to change its preference to false.

How to disable Firefox download Panel more easily

1. Open the Firefox browser
2. Download a file or two, right-click on the Downloads button on the toolbar and uncheck “Show Panel when Download Begins“.
Show panel when download panel begins option
3. Done

This stops Firefox from showing the download panel, however, ongoing download progress will be indicated through a circled ring.

Anytime, you can check completed and current downloads by clicking on the downloads button.

Keep in mind Firefox doesn’t show the downloads button by default unless you’ve downloaded something before, to keep it always visible, right-click on it and uncheck the “Hide button when Empty”.

We’ve previously reported how to restore the download Prompt in Firefox, in addition to this and turning off the download panel, you can now set a temporary folder for downloads like before for Firefox, here is how that can be done.

Ensure you’re using Firefox v102 or later, visit about:config
Give consent to warning
Copy and paste the Pref in the search bar, browser.download.start_downloads_in_tmp_dir, and toggle its pref value to true.

Final words:

Here is how you can disable the download Panel from automatic opening in Firefox and as a bonus, we’ve covered how to set a temporary folder for downloads like before in Firefox.

What do you think of these download panel changes in Firefox? Are you happy with them so far? Let us know in the comments below.