How to change default picture viewer in Windows

Posted on September 12, 2008 at 5:39 am

By default, when I double-click on a picture in Windows, it is opened with Microsoft Picture and Fax Viewer! That’s nice, but I would rather it open with a different photo viewing program, such as Photoshop, GIMP, etc.

If this problem annoys you also, there is a simple way to change the default photo display program in Windows to the application of your choice! Actually, there are two ways to go about it.

Step 1: Open the Control Panel and click on Switch to Classic View at the top left. Then click on the Folder Options icon.

control panel folder options[5]

Step 2: Click on the File Types tab and scroll down to the file extension that you want to change the default program for. For example, if you want to change the default program for viewing photos and pictures, you are going to want to find the JPG, JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP extensions and click on each one of them.

change file type

Once you highlight an extension, click on the Change button to choose a different default program. As you can see from above, my default program for opening pictures is Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, but I can choose any program from the list or browse if it’s not in the list.

open with file type

The second way to change your default photo viewing program is to simply right-click on a photo and choose Open With and then select Choose Program.

open with choose program

Select the program from the list and then check the box that says “Always use the selected program to open this kind of file”.

change file assosciation

That’s it! Now instead of having some annoying default program like Windows Picture and Fax Viewer or JASC Paint program open your photos, you can choose your favorite photo editing program. Enjoy!

If you don’t like Windows default settings, you may be interested in reading my posts on how to change the default location for installing programs in Windows and how to increase the default thumbnail size for pictures in Windows Explorer.

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One Response to “How to change default picture viewer in Windows”

  1. Bill said on : September 12th, 2008 at 11:51 am

    I have used FolderOptions from time immemorial, but IMO FileTypesMan is a fine alternative. (And the download is a whopping 65k!)

    http://www.nirsoft.net

    From the website:
    “FileTypesMan is an alternative to the ‘File Types’ tab in the ‘Folder Options’ of Windows. It displays the list of all file extensions and types registered on your computer. For each file type, the following information is displayed: Type Name, Description, MIME Type, Perceived Type, Flags, Browser Flags, and more.
    FileTypesMan also allows you to easily edit the properties and flags of each file type, as well as it allows you to add, edit, and remove actions in a file type.”


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