Save to PDF via Brave for Androids share/print menu doesn’t print/save images
oddly, it prints website logos but not the images on the page.
This makes the save to pdf function useless for anything but text so if I need to print I must use another browser.
Plus these files aren’t saving to the download folder and I am not being asked where to save… I can’t even find them.
Also: I think it is mistaken to bury such an important function in the share menu when so many users need to save files to pdf multiple times a day.
I feel developers mainly concentrate on issues important to the tech community at the cost of typical users.
You get a TON of help requests demonstrating how dysfunctional and unintuitive the print function is yet this feature isn’t important to developers so it is ignored rather than improved.
How can this issue be reproduced?
Try to save a website to pdf.
Expected result:
file creates PDF without images then saves to an unknown location I never selected.
Brave Version( check About Brave):
1.21 77
Mobile Device details
Xiaomi Mi Max 3, LG v35, Redmi Note 5 Whyred
@brasscupcakes,
You can go to Settings --> Downloads and view where your downloads are being saved. Further, is it necessary to save the site as PDF for your purposes, or are you simply trying to view full web pages offline? If so, you can simply open the main menu and click the “down arrow” icon, which downloads the page you’re on to your device directly.
Let me reach out to Android team about why the images don’t save when a page is downloaded/saved as PDF (because they should as far as I know). I can reproduce this on my end as well.
No, thanks, but I know I can download the page and that is not what I need.
I often need to share page views that wouldn’t be the same if I shared a link on sites where you are logged into an account.
If I only need a portion of the page I send a screenshot but more typically to the content I need to share occupies more than one window.
Even though I save properly there is no saved file in downloads.
And as I mentioned previously, the previews for the PDFs to be saved omit all images except for the site’s header logo.
This would be of little use even if pDFs saved properly which they do not.
@brasscupcakes,
Hmmm – so after some more testing, it appears that I am getting the images saved in PDFs when I save using the Print --> Save as PDF option. You listed three different devices in your initial post – are you saying that all three of these devices have that behavior?
Yes, all three devices but not on the same day so I will try again later today. I searched entire internal storage on the MM3, no saved PDFS from brave anywhere, certainly not the download folder.
I had (still have) a previous glitch of not being able to launch some of the files I download from the downloads folder but that was only the Xiaomi phones, not the LG.
I am running an Adguard subscription … Doubt it is relevant but I will try to disable it.
It would be great if I could fix this by installing an alternative PDF app but would Brave ask me which app I wanted to use to open a file? I don’t recall ever getting that type of prompt.
Thank you very much for your attention to this issue, even if it can’t be solved your support is valuable.
@brasscupcakes,
Looking into this issue still – I think it has to do with device type. I’ll let you know when I know more.
You’re right – it’s not likely but it couldn’t hurt to try.
Yes, if you have alternative PDF file viewers you will be asked which you want to use to open it. Note that this is typically controlled by the devices/systems settings – so you may need to remove Brave as the default PDF viewer, should that be the case. You’ll usually find this some where like Settings --> Apps --> Default applications (the exact path will vary by device).
I really truly appreciate you saying that – most people don’t take the time to say it and it can be easy to forget what value we (support) brings on a hard way. It means a lot.
Let me know what you find out regarding the issue.
Just popping back in again to say I think this might be a matter of having to hit save a number of times before there is a prompt to supply a title and location to save the file under.
The way the procedure plays out, if you just hit save once, it seems to register, but nothing at all happens. Now that I know that the file won’t exist unless I get the opportunity to input a name, I just keep trying until I can.
It’s not exactly elegant (or quick), but at least I’m not searching high and low on internal storage and my sd card for nonexistent files. Still have no clue about the images. Sometimes they all save, sometimes some don’t.
Cheers, Mattches, and thanks again!
@brasscupcakes,
You’re very welcome and I appreciate the follow up.
If you’re interested, I would love to get a short screen recording of you going through the process of hitting Save multiple times until it finally works. That’s some very strange and specific behavior and it should certainly work as intended the first time you hit Save. But I do understand if it’s too much of a hassle.
Regardless I’ve brought this up to our Android team to review but it may take a bit given the large workload our teams are under. Thank you again for reporting, patience and understanding – let me know if you manage to get a recording of that behavior for me to take a look at.