When Microsoft launched Windows 10 back on July 29, it secretly disabled apps that we’ve grown so familiar with and accustomed to, like the Windows Photo Viewer. In Windows 10, you get the new Windows Photo Viewer, which in my opinion comes with better minor editing features. But it is just unfamiliar, and it takes some little getting used to.
If you are the type of user who has not gotten used to the new Photo App, and you’ve been looking at your default image viewer settings in an attempt to set the old Photo Viewer as your systems image default viewer. Here’s why you’ve might be having a little trouble making that happen:
If you upgraded from Windows 7 or Windows 8, although the Photo App will be the default picture viewer. You can get the old Photo Viewer by under option given under ‘Open With’ when you right click on a picture file you want to open.
If you performed a clean install of Windows 10, Microsoft has completely disabled the old Photo Viewer, and there’s no way you can get it back without a special
Innov8tiv came across a rather useful hack illustrated by the guys over at How To Geek on how to get back the familiar Windows Photo Viewer. They got the hack from Edwin from TenForums, and it adds the same registry entries to your Windows 10 system that were present in the earlier versions of Windows.
Simply download this [Windows Photo Viewer hack for Windows 10] (642 bytes), unzip the folder and double click the .reg file. Just like that, the old and familiar Windows Photo Viewer will be back to your Windows 10 PC.
How to set Windows Photo Viewer as the Default Photo Viewer
After running the .ref file, you can now view all .png, .jpg, bmp. and .gif files by right clicking the pictures and heading to ‘Open with’ and select the ‘Choose another app’ option.
When you click the ‘More apps’ option, you will see the Windows Photo Viewer as one of the options. You can click on ‘Always use this app to open’ checkbox.
Going forward, Windows Photo Viewer will become your default image viewer for pictures with that type of file extension. You will need to repeat the above process for the other types of files of pictures (.png, .jpg, .bmp, and .gif) for Windows Photo Viewer to become their default viewers.