HACKER Q&A
📣 metadat

Why does Chrome on Android not open PDF files like Chrome on Windows?


I've found it annoying enough that I avoid clicking PDF links, because they clutter up my Downloads folder.


  👤 amadeuspagel Accepted Answer ✓
Also, why does Chrome on ChromeOS not open PDFs? It's irritating not only because of the downloads folder, but also because it usually makes more sense to have a PDF in a tab, rather then its own window. For example, if an HN submission is a PDF, I want to open both the PDF and the comments in new tabs, and have those tabs next to each other.

👤 compressedgas
Perhaps it is because Android Chrome has no extension support, not even pdfium.

👤 joshxyz
same way chrome on android does not support extensions, they are entirely different underneath.

firefox on android allows extensions but firefox on ios doesnt.


👤 izacus
Probably to keep the Chrome download size down - pdfium is a pretty sizeable library.

PDF viewer (as default handler) is part of Google Drive app and was probably deemed redundant to add it to Chrome.


👤 hulitu
This is a good thing. The first thing i do on Win/Linux is to disable this crappy behaviour.

👤 nonasktell
maybe because pdf vulnerabilities are found so often that it would unleash one zero day a month