More difficult to set default apps in Windows 11 than Win7-10 | Hacker News Reader

More difficult to set default apps in Windows 11 than Win7-10

thurrott.com

20 pointsadrian_mrd8 comments

Honestly the way this works in Window 10 is already insanely infuriating. If anyone has a way to programmatically set associations in Windows 10 and prevent Windows from ever complaining about it I would really fucking love to hear it. I dearly miss the days I could just set all my media associations to VLC/IrfanView with two clicks.

I can't imagine I'll u̶s̶e̶- buy Windows 11 at this point with Proton being at the stage it is and my work/hobbies having moved away from the last few programs that ran exclusively on Windows. I want a computer that does what I tell it to. Microsoft and I are no longer aligned on this at all.

Default file associations can programmatically be retrieved and applied through DISM:

    Dism.exe /Online /Export-DefaultAppAssociations:C:\Users\Foo\MyAssociations.xml
    Dism.exe /Online /Import-DefaultAppAssociations:C:\Users\Foo\MyAssociations.xml

You might need to run it as administrator for it to work.

Part of the reason for not allowing default apps to be set programmatically is that everyone else was abusive with this functionality. You’d install some 3rd party app and it would hijack your default settings to use their shit program. Or malware would do something like set a file association for .exe files so every program launch would relaunch their malware.

At least this way, only Microsoft is abusing the user and there is one set location to fix things. Not that they aren’t extremely presumptuous about it, but at least it only comes from the one vendor and not all of them.

I fundamentally disagree with this philosophy. I get that Microsoft wants the average user not to shoot themselves in the foot and that's what Win Home edition can do. If I have Win Pro there should at least be an easy "i know the risks, please give me back all my foot-guns" button that does away with all this stuff in one click.

An anecdote: I recently bought an android based MP3 player, it's locked down to only be able to use a couple different apps because it's a tiny device with a small battery and running standard android stuff results in terrible battery life and performance. All that is true and yet the company behind it provides clear instructions on how to REMOVE this limit and even leaves the bootloader completely open so you can flash your own roms. I find it hard to put into words the warm fuzzy feeling I got when I realized that I wouldn't have to spend time fighting arbitrary restrictions on something I bought. It was truly an unexpected breath of fresh air.

That still speaks to another problem in the Windows ecosystem - that is the installation of applications. Maybe Winget will help with that, but we can only hope they add its functionality to the Microsoft Store as well so it can become mainstream :)

Maybe another chance for Linux desktop setups to gain momentum if Microsoft actively turns windows I to an unusable mess. OSX would be just as bad if there wasn't a console to fall back on but there are also issues.

I am dreading the windows 11 name at this point. It’s going to be just like win me, win vista, win 8.

Tick tock.

Congrats on Microsoft for finding a way to make it even more tedious than Windows 10.

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