Chrome built-in PDF viewer gives us the convenience to open PDF files. However, it blocks the access of your other PDF software like Adobe Reader at the same time. In such case, you may want to know how to disable the Chrome PDF viewer.
- Disable Chrome PDF viewer from the plugins page
- Disable Chrome PDF viewer from Content Settings
- Set default PDF viewer
Option 1 – Disable Chrome PDF viewer from the plugins page
It’s much easier to disable it in Chrome that is lower than version 57.
Just open the Plugin page by entering about:plugins in Google search box and hitting Enter.
Then you can disable the PDF viewer in the open page.
If you found that you cannot open plugins page in your Chrome, that’s very likely you use Chrome that is of Version 57 onwards. And, from Version 57 onwards, the plugins page has been removed in Chrome.
Option 2 – Disable Chrome PDF viewer from Content Settings
Follow the easy steps with images here:
1) Click the more options button and choose Settings on your Chrome.
2) Click Security and Privacy, then click Site Settings.
3) Go on to click Additional content settings > PDF documents.
4) Select Download PDFs.
Option 3 – Set default PDF viewer
Since Google updates the newest version of Chrome, actually there’s no such choice for you to disable or enable Chrome PDF viewer. It’s set to enabled by default. The option for you changes into whether you want to download instead of opening automatically.
If you want to view your PDF files in other applications like Adobe Reader instead of in Chrome, then you can set your application to be the default one.
See how to set a default app in your Windows:
1) Find and right-click on a PDF file in your File Explorer.
Click Open with > Choose another app.
2) Then highlight the app you want to view your PDF files by default.
Tick on Always use this app to open .pdf files.
Then click OK to save your settings.
Hopefully, this post helped. Please feel free to leave us comments below if you have any questions or suggestions.
