In Windows 8 and Windows 10, things are slightly different because now you have desktop apps and you have Windows Store apps. You can also get to this same dialog by right-clicking on the any file in Explorer, clicking on Open With and then clicking on Choose default program.

In the first method, only programs that have registered with Windows will show up in that list and there is no way to manually add a missing program. The advantage to this method as opposed to the first option is that here you can choose any program you like to open a file. When you click Change Program, you’ll get a list of Recommended Programs and Other Programs, along with an option to Browse to a program that is not currently listed.

Going back and clicking on Adjust a file type or protocol with a program will allow you to browse through the hundreds of file types stored on the computer and then change the default program for opening that type of file. If you want to use a different program to open pictures, for example, select that program from the list and then choose Set this program as default. All other formats are set to open with Windows Photo Viewer. In the example above, Internet Explorer is set to open GIF images and Microsoft Office 2010 is set to open JPG files. You can then click on Set this program as default to have it open all the default file types or you can click Choose defaults for this program to choose specific file types. Select the program and Windows will tell you how many defaults this programs is set to open. If you click on the first link, you’ll get a list of the different programs installed on your computer. Here you will see the two options I mentioned above: Set your default programs and Associate a file type or protocol with a program. Click on the Control Panel and then click on Default Programs while under the icons view. In Windows 7 and higher, you can change which file types a program opens or you can change which program is used when opening a specific file type. If you’re still running Windows XP, then make sure to read my separate post on changing the default program to open a file with since the XP procedure is different. VLC Media Player, and then adjust the settings for it. For example, for the default media player, you would select your media player from the list, i.e. Note that in addition to changing the default picture viewer, you can follow the same steps below to change the default media player, default web browser, etc.

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