Windows 8.1 Bible

Chapter 31: Setting Default Programs

IN THIS CHAPTER

Setting default programs for documents

Setting defaults for your user account

Setting default actions for disks and devices

Setting defaults for all users

As everyone knows, there are many different brands of toothpaste, shampoo, cars, and just about every other kind of product you can buy. The same is true of software. Everyone uses a web browser to browse the Internet, and you have many different brands of web browsers to choose from. There's Internet Explorer, which comes with Windows 8.1. There's also Safari, Firefox, and Google Chrome, to name a few.

For media players, Windows 8.1 comes with Media Player, Media Center, or both depending on which edition of Windows 8.1 you have. In addition to those, there's QuickTime, Musicmatch, and many others. When you have two or more programs capable of handling the same type of document, you might want to make one the default program that opens automatically when you open a document. Setting such defaults is what this chapter is all about.

Setting Default Programs for Files

Typed text, pictures, music files, and video clips are all examples of documents and other types of files that you can create or download to your computer. There are thousands of different file types. Each type is indicated by its filename extension. For example, a picture might be a JPEG (.jpeg or .jpg), BMP (.bmp), GIF (.gif), TIFF (.tif or .tiff), PNG (.png), or any of a couple dozen other formats.

When you ...