(Incidentally, this app selection dialog box is one of the few window types for which Microsoft did not add rounded corners.) After that, you have to repeat the process for each file type that you want to use with that app.Īnother way to change a default app is to right-click on a file in File Explorer, click Open With (which is more conveniently and consistently the second choice in Windows 11's context menu), and then pick the Choose another app option. The last step is to simply choose an app from the list.Click on the file type you want to change the default app for.Here, Microsoft Photos is set to handle all photo file types, since that program's icons appear next to the file extension entry. Click on the app you want to set as the default for a file type and you’ll see the list of all file types it’s capable of handling.You can search for an app or for the file type you want to assign to an app. Windows 11 lists every single app on your machine. You can pin the Settings icon to the Start menu in Windows 11, but it's not there by default. In Windows 11, you need to hunt for a gray gear icon. The Settings app is more hidden than it was in Windows 10. Open the Settings app and tap on the Apps section in the left-hand menu.In Windows 11, you can choose an app to open each file type individually.
You can still set default apps file type-by-file type, but an April 2022 update added a new, simpler way.
Despite this change in Windows 11, it's still not tremendously difficult to set a new default app, but it sometimes requires more effort. For file categories such as videos, that's a problem because of the sheer number of formats that exist: AVI, MP4, MOV, MKV, and WMV, to name just a few. You need to specify a default app for every picayune file type, not just for a broader group of them. With Windows 11, the process is more complicated.