Turn off 'open safe files after downloading' in Safari

The setting you're looking for is at the very bottom of Safari's General settings, labelled Open "safe" files after downloading. Open Safari → Settings → General and untick it. Below is exactly where the checkbox is, what Safari means by "safe," the one-line Terminal equivalent, and how to confirm the change stuck. It's a Safari-only setting.

Find and untick the checkbox

1. Open Safari.
2. From the menu bar choose Safari → Settings, or press Cmd+,.
3. Click the General tab.
4. Scroll to the bottom and uncheck Open "safe" files after downloading.

That's it — the change is live at once, no restart needed. The label and location are identical on macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, and 15 Sequoia. If you don't see the Settings menu, click anywhere in Safari first so its menus are showing in the menu bar.

What Safari counts as "safe"

"Safe" refers to file types Apple considers low-risk to open automatically — not a judgement about any particular file's contents. The list includes:

• Pictures — .jpg, .png, .gif, and similar image formats
• PDFs and text documents
• Movies, sounds, and other media
• Archives such as .zip, and disk images such as .dmg

With the box ticked, Safari opens, expands, or mounts these the instant they finish downloading. Unticking it means every download — safe-listed or not — simply lands in your Downloads folder and stays put until you open it.

The Terminal equivalent

The checkbox maps to one preference key. To set it without the mouse, and to reverse it:

# Turn the setting off
defaults write com.apple.Safari AutoOpenSafeDownloads -bool false

# Undo — turn it back on
defaults write com.apple.Safari AutoOpenSafeDownloads -bool true

Quit and reopen Safari after running it. One thing to know: Safari's preferences live in a protected container, so this command only succeeds if Terminal has Full Disk Access (System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access). Without it, the write silently fails — in which case just use the checkbox above.

Confirm it's off

To be sure the setting took, read the value back in Terminal:

# Should print 0 when the setting is off
defaults read com.apple.Safari AutoOpenSafeDownloads

A result of 0 means auto-open is disabled; 1 means it's still on. Or just test it: download a small image or PDF and watch it stay in Downloads instead of opening. For a broader look at reading and reversing settings like this, see how defaults write works on Mac.