I never need a PDF to be locked when I download them. This is very annoying when I want to quickly annotate them.
Is there any way to change this default in macOS? I am on Catalina.
MacBook Pro with Touch Bar
Old Toad: That is correct, it happens regardless of source.
It may be standard for your situation but I've never had that problem and don't remember anyone else mentioning it recently.
I did click on the button at the bottom to open it in Preview.
Any add-on cleaner apps, add-on anti-malware apps, add-on anti-virus, add-on firewalls, or add-on VPN clients, installed here?
That's exactly what I did and it was not locked for me.
Have you tried using Safari's File ➙ Export as PDF menu option to download the PDF file?
What does that do for the locking?
When following your instructions on a 1040 tax form from the irs.gov site I get this in your #3 step:
Notice that the locked checkbox is not checked. And when saved to a specified location in my documents folder it was not locked.
In other words I can't duplicate your problem.
How to prevent downloaded PDFs from automatically being "Locked."
