How can I make Google Chrome display a plain text HTTP response, rather than downloading it in a file?

Question

There's a web site I visit that includes a document which is returned with content type text/plain and my version of Google Chrome used to display it in the browser window, as plain text. I like it that way. However, it has started to download the document now when I visit it, instead, meaning I have to open it with a text editor to view it. How can I make Chrome return to the old behaviour?

Answer 1

The reason is most likely that the server is telling the client (browser) to download the file. This is controlled (usually) via the HTTP header

Content-disposition: attachment

(optionally with a filename).

Check if the server serves your document with this header. To view the headers, you can download the page using a tool that preserves HTTP headers (e.g. wget --save-headers), or use an online service, e.g. http://web-sniffer.net/ .

Then post the headers here, or even better, the document's URL (if you can).

Answer 2

Can you verify that the Content-Type is actually 'text/plain'? You can do so in by going to View -> Developer -> Developer Tools and viewing the response headers on the file. I've seen situations where the Content-Type is unrecognized (i.e. 'plain/text'), and therefore causes the file to be downloaded rather than displayed.

Answer 3

You could try doing

view-source:http://example.com/the-text-document.txt

Which should let you see the document in chrome regardless of the headers