The Kiosk Mode Annoyance
In some specific web environments—particularly point-of-sale systems, ticketing websites, shipping label generators, or internal company portals—web developers include a small script that forces the browser to immediately open the print dialog box as soon as the page loads. While this is intended to save the user a click when printing a receipt or label, it can be incredibly disruptive if you only wanted to view the document on-screen, save it as a PDF manually, or if you accidentally clicked a link. The screen goes dim, the print preview begins generating, and you are forced to cancel out of the dialog box before you can even interact with the website.
How to Block Sites from Triggering the Print Dialog
Google Chrome does not have a single, universal “disable printing” button in its standard settings menu. However, you can stop individual, annoying websites from forcing the print dialog open by revoking their JavaScript privileges, as JavaScript is the code used to trigger the window.print() command.
1. Navigate to the specific website that is constantly throwing the print dialog box at you.
2. Look at the address bar at the top of the browser. To the left of the URL, click the site information icon (it usually looks like two small slider switches or a padlock).
3. In the dropdown menu, click on Site settings. This will open a new tab dedicated specifically to the permissions for that one website.
4. Scroll down the list of permissions until you find JavaScript.
5. Click the dropdown menu next to JavaScript and change it from “Allow (default)” to Block.
6. Close the settings tab and return to the website. Refresh the page.
By blocking JavaScript, the website can no longer execute the code required to force the print menu open. Note: Blocking JavaScript may break other interactive features on the website. If the site becomes unusable, you will need to re-enable JavaScript.
How to Bypass PDF Auto-Printing
If the auto-print issue happens specifically when you click a link to download a PDF, the problem isn’t the website’s JavaScript, but rather the way the PDF itself was created. Some PDFs have an embedded script that tells the viewer to print immediately.
To stop this, you need to force Chrome to download the PDF instead of opening it in the built-in browser viewer.
1. Open Chrome Settings (three dots > Settings).
2. Go to Privacy and security > Site Settings.
3. Scroll down and click on Additional content settings, then click PDF documents.
4. Select the option to Download PDFs instead of “Open PDFs in Chrome”.
Now, when you click a PDF link, the file will simply download to your hard drive. You can then open it safely in a dedicated application like Adobe Acrobat or Apple Preview without triggering the forced print command.