Snagged your Windows 10 update? Nice, but once everything comes back up you might find that Google Chrome is no longer set as your default browser.
What gives?
Windows 10 comes jam-packed with nifty new features, a slick new start menu and a clean, modern design — but it also has some niggling new default app behaviours.
The OS update changes the default app settings for opening photos, video, and web links — changes that apply regardless of whether you’re performing a Windows 10 upgrade (where such changes aren’t expected).
‘It’s actually really easy to change default browser in Windows 10’
For internet related actives in Windows 10 Microsoft will use its shiny new, and very nimble, Edge web browser by default.
This decision has raised the ire of both users and browser makers’ alike. Mozilla CEO Chris Beard has written an open letter to Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, chastising the move as limiting users’ choice and ‘rolling the clock back’ to the dark days of the browser wars.
The good news is that changing the default browser in Windows 10 is easy to do.
(Yes, it’s annoying that you have to do it in the firs place, but since it only takes a few clicks it’s not worth getting too angsty about.)
How to change default browser on Windows 10
It doesn’t matter which version of Windows you upgrade from the way you change defaults is different in Windows 10.
1. Click Start Menu > Settings:
2. Click the ‘System‘ tile:
3. Select ‘Default Apps’ from the left-hand column:
4. Scroll down to the section headed ‘Web browser’ and click on the icon underneath (it will either read ‘Microsoft Edge’).
5. Select Google Chrome from the list that appears.
Next time you click on a web-link in another app, for example on Twitter or in an e-mail, the resulting web-page will open in Google Chrome and not Microsoft Edge.
You can still continue to use Microsoft Edge; this process does not delete it. If you ever want to go back to using Edge as default just repeat the steps listed above but, in step 5, choose ‘Edge’ instead of ‘Google Chrome’.
- Source: Chrome Help