Taking matters into their own hands! Few would have imagined that changing the default web browser in a modern version of Windows would be quite controversial.
Microsoft made switching from Edge to anything else in Windows 11 incredibly difficult.
Even if you wanted to, you were forced to change more than ten file associations just to make the modern OS open links in alternate browsers like Chrome and Firefox. This is in contrast to the single-click option that was the norm before.
This move naturally received significant backlash from the technology world, with browser makers voicing their outrage.
Redmond gave in, eventually, and fixed the problem.
But things are still brewing in this space, with Google now working on providing users with more ease in this regard. As spotted, a commit on Chromium Gerrit describes a new control that will let Chrome users set the browser as the default one with a single click.
Google describes this change best:
“Make Chrome the default browser. This function works by going through the url protocols and file associations that are related to general browsing, e.g. http, https, .html etc., and directly setting the relevant registry entries for each.”
The current version of Chrome does allow changing the default browser in its settings, but that implementation requires switching to the Settings app in Windows 11 and Windows 10.
This new implementation is much more convenient, not too dissimilar to how Mozilla bypassed these Microsoft restrictions back in 2021 with its own single-click solution for Firefox.
There is no information on when the updated behavior will be available, but considering it is this far ahead in development, it should appear in preview channels for testing soon before the search engine giant releases it to the public.
