Portal Home > Knowledgebase > Miscellaneous > Stop Quicktime from hijacking MP3s > Stop Quicktime from hijacking MP3s in Firefox
This is something that has annoyed countless people. If you have installed Quicktime (or iTunes which requires Quicktime), then when you are browsing and click on an MP3 link to download it, Quicktime will open up in Firefox and play the file. One of the most irritating things is that Quicktime doesn't even stream the file and offer a way of downloading it - it downloads the whole file into your browser cache before playing it, and doesn't even offer an alternative (ie, an option to download the file).
Don't worry, the hours of frustration are over - this is how to banish Quicktime from Firefox and take back control of your MP3 downloads (but before we go any further, I take no responsibility if you break anything doing this):
1) Open a new tab and enter about:config into the address bar. Press enter and click the "I'll be careful, I promise" button.
2) You will see a list of nonsense. In the "Find" bar, enter plugin.disable_full_page_plugin_for_types
3) The chances are that nothing will be found, in this case go to 4a. If it does already exist then go to 4b.
4a) Right Click somewhere in the blank space and go to New > String. Enter plugin.disable_full_page_plugin_for_types and press OK. It will then ask you to enter a string value, enter audio/mpeg and click OK.
4b) Right click on the line of text and click on Modify. If there is no value in there then enter audio/mpeg. If there is already a value then put ,audio/mpeg at the end. Click OK.
5) Close down Firefox and then restart it after a few seconds.
6) Try clicking on an MP3, and you should get the normal download box instead.
I hope this article helps someone to overcome the nightmare of Quicktime, please only do this if you know what you're doing - I have tested this successfully but it can be possible to mess up your Firefox installation if you set things wrong in about:config.
PS. I believe that you can do the same with video/mpeg, audio/x-mpeg and video/3gpp by adding them in the same way (put them into the value field, separated by commas), but I've not tried it so cannot confirm this.
Add to Favourites 
Print this Article
