You can open a file PDF in Google Docs Viewer by appending the URL to:

https://docs.google.com/gview?embedded=true&url=<URL of a supported doc>

This would open a PDF file in the default browser or a WebView.

A list of supported formats is given here.

Answer from arsalank2 on Stack Overflow
🌐
Swifdoo
swifdoo.com › home › blog › how to open pdf on android without downloading
How to Open PDF on Android Without Downloading
November 8, 2024 - If you do not want to download a PDF viewer, you may want to know how to open PDF in Chrome on Android, just like on a computer. Here are the detailed steps. Step 1. Open Google Chrome > Search for Google Docs and launch it. Step 2. Tap the three-dots icon > Select Desktop site. Step 3. After that, choose Blank > tap File > select Open. Step 4. Tap Upload to select the PDF file you want to view. Step 5. Tap to open and view the file. This guide will show you how to open PDF in Chrome without downloading.
Discussions

How can I view a PDF file without downloading it? - Google Chrome Community
Skip to main content · Google Chrome Help · Sign in · Google Help · Help Center · Community · Google Chrome · Terms of Service · Submit feedback · Send feedback on More on support.google.com
🌐 support.google.com
Open PDF files directly in Chrome for Android - Android Enthusiasts Stack Exchange
Google Drive Viewer allows files to be viewed (without downloading) in Google Chrome for Android. More on android.stackexchange.com
🌐 android.stackexchange.com
View Pdf in android application without downloading (No internet connection) - Stack Overflow
I am trying to display a PDF in an Android application. Constraints are: PDF cannot be downloaded to the mobile phone. Server through which PDF is getting downloaded is on Local network. I can w... More on stackoverflow.com
🌐 stackoverflow.com
View pdf in mobile browser without downloading
I have a pdf link. I want to view pdf in mobile browser. So I use many way like object, embeded, frame, but each time pdf will be downloaded in my mobile application. Without downloading I want to ... More on stackoverflow.com
🌐 stackoverflow.com
People also ask

How to Open PDF in Chrome on Android?
For a PDF stored on your phone, upload it to Google Docs, and you can view the PDF in Chrome. If you want to open PDF in Chrome without downloading, copy this address https://docs.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=http://yourfile.pdf. and replace the http://yourfile.pdf with the path of the PDF file.
🌐
swifdoo.com
swifdoo.com › home › blog › how to open pdf on android without downloading
How to Open PDF on Android Without Downloading
How do I enable PDF viewer on Android?
Tap the PDF you want to view, and it will let you set the PDF viewer you want to use.
🌐
swifdoo.com
swifdoo.com › home › blog › how to open pdf on android without downloading
How to Open PDF on Android Without Downloading
🌐
YouTube
youtube.com › eyefeederz
How to view pdf files on android without downloading - YouTube
In this video you will learn how to view pdf files on android smartphones and tablets without even downloading them. NOTE: But for this method to work, you m...
Published   November 27, 2016
Views   23K
🌐
Quora
quora.com › How-do-I-view-PDF-in-mobile-without-downloading-it
How to view PDF in mobile without downloading it - Quora
Answer (1 of 2): Truly it's not possible to open any file without downloading it, even all the websites you visit are downloaded in your systems temp folder and browser cache, there is no way reading any file on the fly as it will be required to be at local system to be opened. But for simplific...
🌐
Google Support
support.google.com › chrome › thread › 164620551 › how-can-i-view-a-pdf-file-without-downloading-it
How can I view a PDF file without downloading it? - Google Chrome Community
Skip to main content · Google Chrome Help · Sign in · Google Help · Help Center · Community · Google Chrome · Terms of Service · Submit feedback · Send feedback on
Find elsewhere
🌐
Pdfgear
pdfgear.com › home › pdf editor reader › how to open pdf on android without downloading any apps
How to Open PDF on Android without Downloading Apps
October 23, 2024 - Step 1. Open the browser on your Android, visit the website of PDFgear online PDF reader. Step 2. Tap Select PDF File button to Upload the PDF file. ... Step 3. The PDF will open instantly in your browser, and you don’t need to download additional ...
🌐
Swifdoo
swifdoo.com › home › blog › view pdf online without downloading in browser
How to View PDF Online Without Downloading in Browser
November 8, 2024 - All you have to do is go to Settings to enable the feature. What if the browser does not have a built-in PDF viewer? In this case, you can add an extension to your browser to open PDF online. Next, I’ll show you how to open and view PDF online without downloading in different browsers.
Top answer
1 of 5
7

Update

Both Edge for Android and Firefox for Android have native support for opening PDF files directly in the browser.

Original answer

You can use a Google Docs page to view PDF files in the browser. To do this, visit the page https://docs.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=http://yourfile.pdf, where http://yourfile.pdf is the path to the PDF file you want to view (credits to this answer).

Unfortunately, there is as far as I know no way to do this automatically in Chrome (you can always paste the URL manually every time you want to open a PDF file but that's not very practical). However, if you use a browser that supports extensions, it's possible to use an extension to automatically redirect PDF files to this URL. Unfortunately, you can't do this on any well-known browsers (Chrome and Edge for Android don't support extensions at all, and Firefox for Android only supports a very limited set of extensions), but there are less well-known browsers where you can do this. The one I use is Kiwi (I have no association with its author).

Once you've installed Kiwi (or another browser that supports Chrome extensions), install the Redirector extension (I have no association with its author). Next, click on the three dots on the top right, scroll down, click "Redirector", then click on the "Edit Redirects" button, and then click on "Create new redirect":

That will open a popup with five text boxes and two checkboxes. Enter the following information:

  1. The first box is just a description, you can enter whatever you want, for example Open PDF in browser.
  2. The second box is an example URL to a PDF file, you can enter the URL to whatever PDF file you want.
  3. In the third box, enter (^https?://[^?]+\.pdf($|\?).*$). This is a regular expression that matches URLs of PDF files. If you know regular expressions, you may want to note that the parentheses that enclose the whole regular expression are necessary to capture the whole URL so that the $1 in the next box works as expected.
  4. In the fourth box, enter https://docs.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=$1. This is the URL that PDF files will be redirected to, $1 represents the URL of the original PDF file.
  5. Check the box labelled "Regular Expression".
  6. The last box is just another description Again, enter whatever you want, for example, Redirects PDF files to a Google docs page that shows the PDF in the browser.

When you're done entering all that, it should look like this:

Now click Save and you're done. Now all PDF files will be opened in the browser like this:

To get a link to the original PDF file, copy the URL from the title bar and remove the https://docs.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url= part from the beginning.

2 of 5
3

Another implementation of this idea is to use a Tasker profile I created. Instructions and profile import are available here. The instructions are also copied below.

Google Drive Viewer allows files to be viewed (without downloading) in Google Chrome for Android.

Setup

  • The following apps are required: Tasker, AutoShare, and AutoTools
  • Set up the AutoShare command
    • Open AutoShare
    • Main Menu - Manage Commands - plus sign
      • New Command = View File
      • Browsing for files = Direct URL
      • URL = https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/12/Google_Drive_icon_%282020%29.svg/1280px-Google_Drive_icon_%282020%29.svg.png
      • Priority = 1
    • Main Menu - Share Targets - ensure “AutoShare Command” is checked
  • Import the project into Tasker using the button below (this page must be viewed on your Android device for the button to appear)

Usage

  • Long-tap a file link in Chrome
  • Tap “Share link” - “AutoShare Command” - “View File”
  • If a file can’t be natively previewed in Google Drive, you may be able to connect an app that can preview the file

Settings

  • By default, the file will open in a new tab. To adjust this setting, open the “Google Drive Viewer” task in Tasker and set %newtab (line 1) as follows:
    • true: file will open in a new tab
    • false: file will open in the same tab currently being used
🌐
WPS Office
wps.com › home › blog › pdf resources › quick guide: how to view pdf files without downloading in chrome
Quick Guide: How to View PDF Files Without Downloading in Chrome
October 16, 2025 - WPS Office is a powerful productivity suite that allows users to open and view PDF files directly within their web browser, including Chrome, Edge, Safari, Firefox, and Opera. With WPS Office, users can quickly and easily access PDF documents without the need to download or install additional ...
🌐
VeryPDF
verypdf.com › wordpress › 201310 › how-to-display-a-pdf-via-android-web-browser-without-downloading-first?-38862.html
How to display a PDF via Android web browser without "downloading" first? | VeryPDF Knowledge Base
October 10, 2013 - Answer: According to your description,you need to display PDF via Android without downloading first. If so, maybe you can have a free trial of software VeryPDF Viewer Cloud API for Android, by which you can transfer computer local file to online file, by which you can display PDF under Android ...
🌐
FlippingBook
flippingbook.com › blog › guides › protecting-pdf-from-printing-and-downloading
How to View PDF Online Without Downloading It — FlippingBook Blog
April 30, 2026 - However, once the file becomes a cloud drive link, you lose track of who views it and what happens next, and content protection is pretty much non-existent. Online flipbooks are interactive HTML5 publications made from PDF files via FlippingBook. They are essentially PDFs made better—they can be shared as links, they resemble a printed copy down to the smooth page-flip effect, they have a lot of cool interactive features, and—what's most important in our case!—they instantly open without a download, in any browser.
🌐
Mozilla Support
support.mozilla.org › en-US › questions › 1047699
how to view pdf files without downloading them on firefox for android | Firefox for Android Support Forum | Mozilla Support
February 22, 2015 - The files are downloaded. Using a browser plugin does not prevent the data from being stored locally on your computer. Read this answer in context 👍 1 ... Not in any reliable manner. There is PDF.js but it has not been optimized for Firefox for Android.
🌐
Stack Overflow
stackoverflow.com › questions › 49934873 › view-pdf-in-mobile-browser-without-downloading
View pdf in mobile browser without downloading
Without downloading I want to view pdf in mobile browser. I also search about google doc, it provide view pdf via send link but some time it give error messages like "NO Preview Available". I simply use html and javascript. Can anybody solve this problem? Please help me. Thanks in Advance. javascript · html · pdf · mobile-browser · androidpdfviewer ·
🌐
Reddit
reddit.com › r/notion › open pdfs without downloading on android?
r/Notion on Reddit: Open PDFs without downloading on Android?
December 15, 2022 -

Hi, only new to notion but was just wondering if there is another way to insert a PDF file into a page that will either open the file natively or in browser without needing to download the file on Android? All that comes up is the buttons to share or download the file.

Google Pixel 7 Pro.

🌐
Stack Overflow
stackoverflow.com › questions › 74912121 › view-pdf-without-downloading
html - View PDF without downloading - Stack Overflow
... ps: when I say without downloading, I mean it should not auto download into the Downloads folder of the device and clutter the disk storage. ... You can't view ANY document without downloading it or some version of it.
🌐
DocFly
docfly.com › pdf-viewer
PDF Viewer: View PDF Files Online For Free
Sign up for a monthly or annual subscription for unlimited downloads. ... Wondering how to view PDF files or how to open PDF files online? Before deciding any edits you wish to make to a PDF or sharing PDF files online, you first need to be able to view PDF files. Many people use a PDF file reader such as Adobe to open PDF files online and view them. However, DocFly’s PDF file opener provides another option for viewing PDF files without having to download any software.
Top answer
1 of 11
7

Is anyone else getting completely fed up with these companies just screwing regular workers by doing the dumbest things you can imagine? For example, not being able to open a .PDF in the default application from a web browser. Like users have been able to do for years? The options are open in the browser or download. WTF is this? At first, I thought it was just Edge, nope it’s Chrome as well now. This keeps coming up more and more and I can’t seem to find a simple solution.

I have a client that is literally about to explode. They don’t want to have to download the pdf and then open it. They haven’t had to do it in years and they don’t want to do it now. Nor are they interested in using edge or any other browser to deal with PDF’s. They honestly open like 50 to 60 pdf’s a day and need all of the stuff in Adobe Pro. It’s literally what they do all day. Now it’s an extra step for god only knows why.

Now it’s on me to find a workaround because these dumbass companies (mainly Microsoft) just don’t care about their customers. Sorry I’m bitching but it’s gotten to a completely unacceptable level of complete ridiculousness.

Does anyone know why they are doing this? IE, a security reason. I’m trying to find a reason to explain to clients why it’s being done. Adobe is a $285 Billion company for a reason. People use the crap out of their software. That probably answers my question of why this happening, money. The clients don’t care about the tech. They just want to get some work done the same way they did it before. Not with extra hoops and jacking around.

So frustrated.

fd1211fb-2cdd-4819-a3d8-11ea8cf3c62d-chromepdf.png800×193 22.5 KB

06468574-d4e4-4789-a4d7-6c71e3dfac2c-edgepdf.png800×187 23.4 KB

2 of 11
0

Both Edge and Firefox have a setting to open a pdf in the Windows default application. No idea about Chrome or Brave, I don’t use them.

🌐
Smallpdf
smallpdf.com › home › pdf reader
PDF Viewer | Open PDFs Online with Our Free PDF Reader
Open and read PDFs online with this fast PDF viewer. Forget software signups and downloads. Our online PDF reader lets you view PDFs in your browser for free.