Opening PDF after save to iOS home screen

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AI-generated summary

In a UX-focused discussion about PWA behavior on iOS when opening PDFs saved to the home screen, Halden42 shares a workaround for forums hosting uploads locally on the server — a slight drag-to-right gesture to exit the PDF without closing the entire PWA. This issue does not affect users with external upload providers (like S3), where a “done” button or new tab typically appears. Halden42 clarifies that the original bug report conflated local and external upload scenarios, and thanks the community for support. Ethsim2 agrees with this distinction, acknowledges the usefulness of the workaround, and congratulates Halden42 on their first Meta topic — noting that this solution resolved a significant usability issue for their own locally-hosted forum. Both users emphasize the value of Discourse’s tarball backup for local uploads and appreciate the community’s collaborative troubleshooting.

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i have found a workaround for this i’d like to share.

if you use S3 or another external provider for uploads, you can safely ignore this topic. My workaround only applies to hosting’s where the uploads are stored locally on the Server

My workaround is a slight drag-to-right motion, please see the below video for how this works.

If you do actually use an external provider for uploads, and read my first post anyway (thank you for that🙂), you can see inside that a “done” button should be available / a new tab opens

I think it’s great the amount of support here on meta for external media uploads, i think the Bug @Ethsim2 replied to was mixing the local uploads circumstances and external upload circumstances.

But thank you anyway for all contributions

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yes, on reflection, i agree​:+1:

my forum stores uploads locally on the server, so i have complete confidence in Discourse’s tarball backup file.

Therefore, i had this issue, but neither knew the workaround or had the preliminary insight that you do to make a meta topic!

so congratulations on your first topic, and solving what was once a big issue in my use of PWA