Here’s a quickie…

For whatever reason, since upgrading to Leopard, Safari refused to display PDFs. Instead, they would automatically download, cluttering up my Downloads folder with PDF files I only wanted to look at once. I looked everywhere, but couldn’t find a checkbox or control anywhere that dictated whether PDFs should open in Safari or whether they should download to my hard drive. Some people might prefer PDFs to download directly. I didn’t.

Eventually, I got sick enough of PDFs downloading themselves against my will, so I decided to do a little searching.  Not long after, I found the answer. Since I’m a nice guy, I’ll go ahead and share it with you here.

There is a Terminal command that allows you to turn inline PDF displaying on or off. To force all PDFs to download instead of displaying in Safari, type the following into the Terminal and press return:

To enable PDF viewing in Safari, type this instead:

It’s quick and easy to change, but not particularly accessible. A checkbox in Safari Preferences would be a welcome addition. At any rate, my PDF-viewing sanity has been restored.