Why Your PDFs Are Saving As Chrome HTML Files (And How To Fix It)

A PDF — which stands for Portable Document Format — is an open standard document file extension created by Adobe. It has gained popularity in recent years because of the ease of use it affords the user. You can pretty much open a PDF file on any device regardless of its operating system, provided that you have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed or a web browser that has a built-in PDF viewer, like Google Chrome.

If you keep Chrome up-to-date without changing any settings, any PDF you download may open within the web browser by default. The same PDF file, when you access it through the folder you saved it under, can be opened and read through your machine's default PDF viewer (which would probably be Adobe Acrobat Reader, if you have it). If everything goes smoothly, a PDF file downloaded through Chrome should be saved with a .pdf extension. However, in some cases, you may encounter a hiccup that suddenly switches all your downloaded PDF files into Chrome HTML files, all bearing the Chrome thumbnail logo. What does it mean and how do you fix it?

What is a Chrome HTML file?

Any file that is associated with Chrome simply means that by default, it can be opened and viewed within Google's web browser. In the case of PDF documents that have been converted to a Chrome HTML files, they are still essentially PDF documents, but instead of automatically launching within Adobe Acrobat Reader when opened, they will open in Chome by default, even if you get the files through other means.

In general, a PDF that's been converted into a Chrome HTML document is not an error per se. In fact, according to Adobe, Chrome HTMLs are easier to share through social media and the web in general as it provides various types of users a wider avenue for viewing the content online. Simply put, to view a Chrome HTML file, you don't need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader — you just need Google Chrome.

Of course, some users may find it frustrating when their downloaded PDF documents that used to have the easy-to-spot Adobe Acrobat thumbnail have inexplicably turned into Chtome HTML files that now brandish the Google Chrome logo. All of a sudden, it becomes harder to distinguish PDF files from other saved webpages. There are several potential reasons why this is happening. The first one is you may have installed a buggy update — either for Google Chrome or Microsoft Windows — that automatically switched all your PDF documents to Chrome HTML files. The other is you may have accidentally changed your computer's default app for opening PDF files yourself.