Sometimes you want to pick one particular program to open a certain type of file on your PC. The default program for your device might be the Windows Photo app to open a program, but perhaps you want to open in Photoshop Elements. A reader is having an issue figuring out how to do it Windows 10.
“I can not get the program associate a file or protocol to work. How do I get this back? It did work in Win 7. Now I have win 10. I would like to use another program to open a file, such as a different music player to play a piece of music. When the default is one named music and would like to use another type of music. I remember that in Win 7, I was able to click on Default Program in Control Panel and click Associate A file etc. with another file, if I was not able to open the file with the default. There would be a few screens of files to chose from. But I can not do this in Win 10. How do I accomplish this?”
It’s pretty easy to do. I’ll show you the quick way, first. Just right-click on the file you want to open and choose Open with from the menu.
Then select Choose another app.
Find the app you wish to use and put a check next to Always use this app.
There are also ways to go in and control which apps are used as defaults for particular types of files. We’ll take a deeper dive into the system setting to learn how to manage that tomorrow.