Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

Firefox stopped remembering where to save downloads by site

  • 7 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 3 views
  • Last reply by McCoy

Chris Shaffer
Chris Shaffer
more options

Before, Firefox would remember where I had saved a file based on the domain. So it would remember that things I download from my banking sites go in the user/finance folder, and things I downloaded from board game sites go in the user/games folder. It stopped doing that and now it defaults to whatever the last used download location was, regardless of the download domain.

How can I get it to revert to the previous behavior? It was very handy for it to remember that a file downloaded from the site http://foo.com/ went in the user/foo folder...

Before, Firefox would remember where I had saved a file based on the domain. So it would remember that things I download from my banking sites go in the user/finance folder, and things I downloaded from board game sites go in the user/games folder. It stopped doing that and now it defaults to whatever the last used download location was, regardless of the download domain. How can I get it to revert to the previous behavior? It was very handy for it to remember that a file downloaded from the site http://foo.com/ went in the user/foo folder...

All Replies (7)

McCoy
McCoy
more options

Hello Chris Schaffer,

Would you try this please :

Type in the address bar about:config and press Enter (ignore the warning)

Type in the search bar and look for the preference :

browser.download.useDownloadDir and set its value to false (default = "true")

Then type in the search bar and look for the preference :

browser.download.folderList and make sure that its value is not
set to "2" - if it is : change it to 1 (= default).

If you had to change a value, then close and restart Firefox.

Any difference ?

Chris Shaffer
Chris Shaffer Question owner
more options

useDownloadDir was already set to false and folderList was set to 1.

I went ahead and changed it to True / 2, restarted, then set it back to False / 1.

Unfortunately, it's still not working correctly.

McCoy
McCoy
more options

Bummer !

Would you try to create this boolean preference :

browser.download.lastDir.savePerSite and set its value to false

(then close and restart Firefox)

Any luck ?

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

Does this still work in the current Firefox 74.0 release since you posted with Firefox 75 Beta/DE ?

You aren't using Private Browsing mode or have enabled "Resist Fingerprinting" ?

Chris Shaffer
Chris Shaffer Question owner
more options

browser.download.lastDir.savePerSite was already false. Changing it to true didn't help, nor did changing it back to false (restarting Firefox each time).

I'm not using Private Browsing.

Privacy.resistFingerprinting is set to false.

I'll investigate if downgrading to 74.0 helps.

Chris Shaffer
Chris Shaffer Question owner
more options

Downgrading to 74.0 didn't help either

McCoy
McCoy
more options

I just read a very, very long thread from back in 2011, where numerous people had the same problem.

For some what has been suggested here did the trick; for others nothing seemed to work.

As nothing works for you either, maybe you'd like to give this add-on a try :

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/downthemall/

Maybe this doesn't even come close to doing what you want, but it's worth a try though .....