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Oct 10

Change the Default Programs in Windows

Posted in: Freeware, Software, Today's Chili, Windows

This article was written on April 01, 2011 by CyberNet.

Default programs editor

Windows Windows only
There is something nice about finding an application that focuses on doing one thing, and doing that thing very well. That’s how I feel about the Default Programs Editor app. It accomplishes a task I feel should be better managed in Windows itself, but with this no-install/portable program I start to forget about this shortcoming in Windows.

This app is a single executable that can be used to manage just about anything related to opening files. With it you can choose which context menu entries appear when you right-click on a particular filetype, you can add/remove the programs associated to a filetype in the “Open with” menu, and much more:

Add, edit, and remove context menu items
Edit file type icon and description
Change the ‘Open with…’ programs list
Change context menu item icons
Change an extension’s associated file type
Add, edit, and remove autoplay handler programs
Change the default autoplay handler
Change autoplay options for any media type
Optional install to the Control Panel
Export changes to .reg files
Remove unchangable default associations
Disable “Search web for unknown extension” dialog

You may not have noticed the export option in that list of features, but that can be extremely useful if you want to set up multiple machines with the same settings. That way you can just execute the “.reg” file to have those same settings applied without even needing to download this program again. Pure genius!

Here are a few more screenshots of the Default Programs Editor in action:

Change the applications in the “Open with” menu for TXT files
Default open with