Windows 11 provides an exciting user interface update on the platform, with a centered taskbar, windows with rounded corners, and a general minimalist design that make this operating system look like it belongs in 2021. However, not all is good news. It turns out that Microsoft has succeeded it is becoming increasingly difficult to choose your own browser, aggressively placing Edge as the default option. In short, it’s just messy.
What about choosing a browser in Windows 11?
When you open a link for the first time after downloading a third-party browser to Windows 11, you’ll see a pop-up window asking you how you want to open that link (that is, which browser you want to use). Since you also see a pop-up window in Windows 10, you may think that the process works exactly the same: choose the browser you want and click “Okay“.
Unfortunately, there is one important difference: unless you remember to click on the easy-to-lose icon “Always use this app”Option, all subsequent links will open in Microsoft Edge. You will never see this popup again, even if you try to use only a third-party browser. So what gives?
Microsoft is not completely anti-competitive, like tthere is still a way to set, for example, Google Chrome as the default web browser … but it is not easy. There it should be an easy choice to say “Windows, always open my stuff in Google Chrome,“but Instead, in this example he would you must set Chrome as the default for each file type, such as HTM, HTML, PDF, SHTML, SVG, WEBP, XHT, XHTML, FTP, HTTP, and HTTPS.
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This is how things are currently done in Windows 11. Instead of seeing this pop-up window, most web browsers will ask you to open your head Default applications section of Configuration, where you have to choose which web browser you want to use for each file type listed (the default value of each will, of course, be Microsoft Edge). To access this configuration page yourself, go to Settings> Applications> Default applications.
The Virgin tried Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi and Brave with this new “system” and only Firefox managed to change all these options automatically without having to ask you to do it for them. In this same piece, The Verge highlights the concerns of several web browser manufacturers, such as Mozilla, Vivaldi and Opera, regarding the direction Microsoft is taking with the user’s choice.
It’s a shame, because Edge, despite his reputation, is really one good browser. I guess Microsoft thinks the only way to convince you of this is to force you to use it. This is a way to incorporate users, but it certainly feels predatory.