How To Find Default Browser In Registry

If you lot've updated your PC from Windows 10 to Windows xi, you may accept noticed that when you click on a link for a website, a PDF document, or a variety of other file types, y'all will now be sent to Microsoft's Border browser. In its new version of Windows, Microsoft seems to have become especially ambitious in pushing its own apps over the apps that had been installed as defaults before the upgrade. In other words, Edge of a sudden became your default browser.

Commonly, the kickoff time you get into another browser that is not Edge — say, Google Chrome — the not-Edge browser will ask if you'd like to get in the default instead. However, the procedure for irresolute your defaults in Windows 11 has get more complicated than it was in Windows x. Then you may non go that handy request — or if y'all do, it may country you lot on a complicated-looking page headed "App > Default apps." Either way, here'southward how to switch.

Switch default browsers

If y'all don't want Border to be your default browser, and your favorite browser isn't offer to make the alter for y'all — or if information technology did offer only instead sent y'all to the "Default apps" page — here's how to switch the default. For this example, I'chiliad using Google Chrome, but this should work with whatever browser that y'all take installed on your system.

Select Settings > Apps > Default apps
Under "Set defaults for applications," either ringlet down to where your preferred browser is listed or type the name in the "Search apps" field. Click on the app.

Switching browsers means associating each file type with your new browser. — *Switching browsers ways associating each file type with your new browser.*

Y'all'll run across a listing of browser-related files, and nether each file name, the app with which it is currently associated. In Windows 11, y'all can't simply change your default browser with a unmarried click — you have to change the assigned browser for every specific file blazon.
Look for the file types assigned to Edge, such as .HTM, .HTML, HTTP, HTTPS, and maybe .PDF (unless y'all accept a PDF reader you lot adopt). Click on the ones you want to modify.

When you first click on a file type, Windows may try to discourage any changes. — *When you first click on a file type, Windows may try to discourage whatsoever changes.*

Yous may get a "Before y'all switch" pop-up urging you to try Microsoft Edge — go alee and click on "Switch anyhow." Yous'll get a pop-up with a "Go on using this app" pick on height and your other installed browsers below. Become alee and select the one yous want to utilise. (Be enlightened that there may be some file types that won't offering your browser equally an alternative.)

You can change each file type for an appropriate installed app. — *You lot can change each file type for an appropriate installed app.*

Note: by the fourth dimension yous read this, some browsers may take instituted a arrangement for letting y'all more hands switch your default browser. For case, when this was written, the first time I opened Firefox, information technology asked if I wanted it to go the default. I allow information technology go ahead, and when I went to the "Default apps" section of setup, I found that Firefox was now set equally the default for .HTM, .HTML, .HTTP, and .HTTPS files. Border was still listed for .PDF, .SHTML, .SVG, .XHT, and .XHTML files.

The Firefox default wizard switches some — but not all — of the browser file settings. — *The Firefox default wizard switches some — but non all — of the browser file settings.*

1 more than thing: if you do open Edge for any reason, you will go the expected pop-up urging yous to return to "recommended browser settings."

That won't solve everything

But wait — at that place's more than. Fifty-fifty after you switch your browser default to something other than Edge, you're yet going to get Edge as the favored browser for a number of Windows apps. For instance, bring upward Windows eleven'due south new Widget pane (by clicking on the Widgets icon in your taskbar, the one that looks like a two-paned window), and click on ane of the news items that announced there — and the link volition open Edge.

If you find that irritating, there may be an app for that. In social club to open Edge-specific links, you need to practise the post-obit:

Go to Settings > Apps > Default Apps.
Scroll down to the bottom until you see "Cull defaults past link type."
Click on that and then in the search box labeled "Set defaults for link types," type "Edge."
Under the label "Microsoft-Border, you'll see "Microsoft Edge." Click on that, and you'll run across any other browsers that yous can use to open up those specialized links.

Interestingly, if you install Chrome or Firefox, you won't see them as choices. But if y'all install the Brave browser, y'all will see it as an option — and if you select that, and then whenever y'all click on a news link in the Widget pane, information technology will come up in Dauntless.

You can set the Brave browser to open widget links. — *You tin set the Brave browser to open widget links.*

Some other possibility is a tool called EdgeDeflector that was originally created to intercept any links in Windows ten that were Edge-specific and rewrite them on the fly so that they can be opened by the default spider web browser. I did a little browsing and read that its latest version, v1.two.3.0, would piece of work with Windows xi.

I installed and followed the directions for setup. Unfortunately, while that worked for most links, when I clicked on a link from the news sources in the Widgets pane, information technology didn't quite work — the link opened in Chrome, simply none of the graphics came through. I'd go on an heart on this app, though...

Update Oct 8th, 2021, 1:10PM ET: What happens when some browsers offer to switch your defaults has been antiseptic.

Update Oct tenth, 2021, 10:30AM ET: Updated to include directions for allowing the Brave browser to open certain specialized Windows links.

Update November 15th, 2021 five:00PM ET: Added note about Microsoft blocking EdgeDeflector.