Disable Google Chrome’s PDF Viewer, Open PDF Documents With Adobe Reader or Acrobat

The latest version of Google Chrome has a built-in PDF viewer which is actually very handy.

You can simply drag and drop PDF documents into the Google chrome window to view PDF files without Adobe Acrobat reader. I don’t remember when was the last time I used Adobe Acrobat for viewing PDF files, I always have the habit of using Google Chrome to read Ebooks and other PDF files. And Google Chrome’s PDF viewer plugin works for both online as well as offline documents. So I can skip installing Adobe Reader or any other PDF application and use Google Chrome to read PDF documents.

Another neat thing regarding Chrome’s PDF viewer plugin is that you can open email attachments directly in PDF viewer without having to download the email attachment on the local computer. As an example, I get a lot of email regarding product releases and newsletters who have a PDF document attached to it. Earlier, I used to download the document on my computer and then open it with Adobe Reader.

Next, I switched to Google Docs for reading PDF documents, so that a copy of the document is stored on my Google Docs account and I don’t need to download anything on the computer. But after using Google Chrome’s PDF viewer, I have stopped using both Adobe Reader and Google Docs for reading ebooks.

Disable Google Chrome’s PDF Viewer Plugin And Revert back To Adobe Reader

However, it turns out that most people are not very comfortable using Google Chrome’s PDF viewer. We received the following email from one of our readers:

I don’t want to use Google Chrome’s PDF reader extension. Please tell me how to disable it and switch back to my default desktop PDF application.

First I want to clarify one point which the reader has missed.

Chrome’s PDF viewer is not an extension but a browser plugin which comes inbuilt with Google Chrome. There is no need to install any extension, you can always disable the PDF viewer plugin from Google Chrome Plugins page. Here are the steps that needs to be followed:

1. Open Google Chrome and type chrome://plugins in the browser address bar and hit “Enter”

2. You would see a “disable” link under Chrome PDF viewer, as shown below

3. Click the link to Disable Chrome’s PDF viewer. The Adobe reader plugin will automatically be enabled in Google Chrome, if you have it installed.

4. Now double click a PDF document on your computer and it should automatically open with Adobe reader, Foxit reader or any other PDF reader application installed on your computer.

More information on Google Chrome’s PDF viewer is available on this help center page. If you have any questions or doubts, please feel free to use the comments section below.