export default defineConfig({ use: { acceptDownloads: false, }, });

Have you configured the browser to acceptDownloads?

Yes… i did it in config file as mentioned here

https://playwright.dev/docs/api/class-testoptions#test-options-accept-downloads

The default is true so shouldn't be the issue actually

do you have a listener set up for the download?

Right… i also tried with page.waitForEvent(‘download’) but still the pdf is opening instead of downloading. It seems the listener works only for non pdf docs

Could you use page.pdf() to generate a pdf of the page once it opens in a new tab?

https://playwright.dev/docs/api/class-page#page-pdf

I know it isn't the greatest solution

This will generate the pdf of current page. I want to download the pdf after i click on the link to which it is attached

Right but if it generates "chromium’s internal pdf viewer." then surely this would generate the pdf you want.

Not suggesting this as the final solution but a potential work around

You could do something similar to this -

Get the href from the "download pdf" button

href = page.locator("a.download-pdf").get_attribute('href')
absolute_url = f"https://arxiv.org{href}"

# Download the file using requests
file = requests.get(absolute_url)
with open('output.pdf', 'wb') as f:
    f.write(file.content)

https://www.scrapingbee.com/webscraping-questions/playwright/how-to-download-file-with-playwright/#:~:text=You%20can%20download%20a%20file,download%20the%20file%20using%20requests%20.

I will try this and get back with results… thanks for quick reply