How to have Firefox save txt files automatically instead of opening in browser

Question

When I click on a txt file I would like the browser to save it to the default download folder instead of opening it in the browser directly.

I have checked Options --> Applications to determine how the browser handles text/plain content types and beside "text document" it says "Save".

In the mimetypes.xml file under the current firefox profile, this entry refers to text/plain documents, so it should save the files automatically.

However it is still being opened directly in the browser. Is there a different setting that I need to change? I know with PDF files, firefox 18 or something came with a special pdfjs extension that overrides my own settings and had to be disabled in the configuration, but not sure if there is something sneaky like this for plaintxt files.

I tested it on links to txt files from http://www.textfiles.com/history/

I am using the latest version of Firefox.

Answer 1

Simply right-click the link and Save Link as.

OR

Go to about:config page in Firefox, then set browser.altClickSave to true then you can force a download if you hold down the Alt key and left-click the link.