Canapin
(Coin-coin le Canapin)
July 14, 2026, 4:36pm
1
Hi!
I use this neat component quite often, at least once a week.
The main issue is that the embedded PDFs are most of the time unreadable by defaut because the preview size is so small.
Default:
After toggling off the page previews and clicking twice the “fit” button (that’s a lot of clicks):
Sure, it’s better, but still hardly readable. The height is so small (hardcoded at 500px but overridable), and the width isn’t the best too.
I get the component is called “PDF Previews ” yet, I’d like to be quickly able to actually read the PDF in good conditions.
I can click the link, but it will download the PDF, so it’s not what I’m looking for.
Currently the only way to quickly display the PDF in a readable state is clicking the print icon, which is not really intuitive:
Is it possible to simply have a “fullscreen” toggle to display the PDF preview in a larger popup, the same way it exists for tables and codeblocks?
I’d be so happy to see such a QoL change in this component.
5 Likes
Canapin
(Coin-coin le Canapin)
July 14, 2026, 4:42pm
2
Uh. After searching for a bit on meta, I notice it shouldn’t:
Clicking the link opens the PDF but on my instance, it downloads them. I don’t know why.
1 Like
Moin
July 14, 2026, 4:53pm
3
I think there was a fix recently
Currently, I’m finding that clicking on the PDF link when a PDF preview is active currently attempts to download the PDF (undesired) instead of opening it in a new tab.
This is with simple self-hosting (single container, no CDN, no S3, horizon theme).
This whole thing was addressed back here:
The reason why this is a problem is that a common user desire is to read an inline PDF in the entire window, as the iframe is quite restrictive. Download adds an unecessarily annoying step. And there is…
1 Like
Canapin
(Coin-coin le Canapin)
July 14, 2026, 5:11pm
4
Thank you for this information, I wasn’t aware of it. I updated, but my PDFs are still forcibly downloaded on click.
Whether they are opened or downloaded on click, the requested feature stays anyway: I’d like to be able to properly preview my PDFs in the context of a Discourse post.
david
(David Taylor)
July 14, 2026, 5:16pm
5
The fix in that other topic isn’t merged yet, so that’ll be why
I reopened it for clarity
2 Likes
Moin
July 14, 2026, 6:20pm
6
My expectation that the PR had been merged and this was fixed was based on the fixed tag, not the fact that the topic was closed. I think the topic was also closed again before the fix was merged
@Canapin it’s merged, so you might want to try.
2 Likes