How to Make Windows Photo Viewer Your Default Image Viewer on Windows 10

Home windows 10 uses the new Pics app as your default image viewer, but numerous people today nonetheless desire the old Windows Photo Viewer. You can get Photograph Viewer back in Windows 10, nevertheless. It is just concealed.

Relevant: How to do a Clear Put in of Windows 10 the Uncomplicated Way

If you up grade a Laptop running Home windows 7 or 8.1 to Windows 10, Home windows Picture Viewer will be readily available, and you can set it as your default photograph viewer if you want. However, if you conduct a clean set up of Windows 10 — or buy a Personal computer with Home windows 10 now on it — you can’t accessibility Image Viewer at all. The fascinating factor is that Image Viewer is however there. It’s just concealed, and you will have to make a few of Registry edits to have it show up. Immediately after you do that, you can then set it as your default photograph viewer.

Update: Windows Photograph Viewer was not minimize from Home windows 11, and you can make Windows Picture Viewer your default photograph viewer on Home windows 11.

The Dilemma

For whichever motive, Microsoft opted not to contain the Registry keys that allow entry to Windows Photograph Viewer on Home windows 10. People keys are stored in location if you update from a previous model of Home windows, but they are not produced in the course of the installation of Windows 10. Microsoft definitely wants you to open up all individuals picture information in its new Photos app as an alternative.

Related: How to Established Your Default Apps in Windows 10

If you navigate to the Default apps pane in Configurations, you won’t even see Picture Viewer as an possibility. The previous “Default Programs” Management Panel app isn’t considerably enable, both. Open it up, and you can only make Photo Viewer the default affiliation for .tif and .tiff data files — not other kinds of visuals.

Similar: What Are DLL Documents, and Why Is 1 Lacking From My Computer?

You also just cannot only position graphic information at a unique .exe file to affiliate them with Photograph Viewer, both. Image Viewer is basically portion of a DLL file named “PhotoViewer.dll” and doesn’t have a different executable file linked with it.

So, how do you get Image Viewer again? By firing up our aged close friend Registry Editor, of course. And after you do that, you can established it as your default picture application.

Step Just one: Help Photograph Viewer in the Registry

We’ll require to insert the exact registry entries that ended up existing on Home windows 7 and 8.1 and are still present on systems that upgraded from people outdated variations of Home windows. To make points straightforward, we’ve put with each other a Registry hack you can use to make these edits quickly simply because they’re a minimal cumbersome to make manually. Obtain and unzip the next file:

Activate-Windows-Photograph-Viewer-on-Home windows-10

Inside of, you’ll discover two hacks. Operate the “Activate Home windows Photograph Viewer on Windows 10” hack to build the keys and values in the Registry and activate Photograph Viewer. And if you ever want to deactivate it, just operate the “Deactivate Windows Photograph Viewer on Home windows 10 (Default)” hack. Of class, there is no serious have to have to deactivate it in the Registry. You can always depart it obtainable and just associate your image information with a different application.

Note: A huge many thanks to nexus over at TenForums for finding the necessary registry options.

And keep in mind — this action is only essential if you are employing a clean Home windows 10 procedure. If you upgraded from Windows 7 or 8.1, you should be ready to go forward and set Windows Picture Viewer as your default graphic-viewing software in all the standard ways.

Step Two: Set Home windows Image Viewer as Your Default Impression Viewer

To associate an graphic file with Photograph Viewer, appropriate-click on any style of image file — for illustration, a .png, .jpg, .gif, or .bmp file — and find Open up With > Pick One more Application.

In the “How do you want to open up this file?” window, decide on Windows Picture Viewer. If you never see it at first, scroll to the base of what is listed and click the “More apps” selection — it’ll exhibit up. Choose the “Always use this app to open .___ files” option, and then click on “OK.”

Update: If the “Choose A different App” selection doesn’t do the job for some rationale, here’s a different way you can do it: First, correct-click on the kind of image file you want to adjust (for case in point, a PNG, JPEG, GIF, or BMP file) and select “Properties” to open up the Houses window. On the Normal pane, simply click the “Change” button to the right of “Opens With” and find Home windows Image Viewer.

Windows Picture Viewer will now be the default image viewer for that type of impression file. You are going to will need to repeat this procedure for every single type of impression file you want to use it with. In other text, when you open an impression that opens in the Pictures app, just near the Photographs app and use the “Open with” menu to affiliate that file type with Windows Photograph Viewer. You’ll only have to do this the 1st time you open up each and every new form of image file.

Naturally, we simply cannot ensure that Microsoft will preserve accessibility to Photo Viewer all over endlessly. But for now, at the very least, it is nonetheless there — even if you have to put in a little do the job to uncover it.