Month: August 2015

Setting Default Browser in Windows 10

A controversial topic presented by Mozilla (developers of Firefox) said that it was “disturbing” that Microsoft was being would change the default browser preference when Windows 10 is installed. I wrote a Twitter comment that stated Mozilla should “get over it”. Others said the same thing. I appreciate that Microsoft said they would leave this open for change based on user feedback. I like this stand by Microsoft and I stand by my own statement. Innovation and improvements based on user feedback and experiences should be a core goal of software companies. Microsoft has provided a new browser, Edge, and I think everyone should give it a test drive.

Helping people to perform basic Windows functions is something I need to know. It takes a bit of time and effort to negotiate the new Windows menus to find where to set the default applications so I set out to document and provide simple instructions on changing your Windows 10 default web browser back to something else, whatever it may be.

I like using Microsoft Edge, it’s simplicity, basic features, and speed. For example, I really like the Book icon on the toolbar that minimizes the contents of the current web page by removing extra assets (photos, videos, ads, etc.) and makes reading even easier and faster.

Setting Default Windows Browser

This instruction can be followed on all Windows 10 versions.

  1. Click on the Start button
  2. Click on Settings
  3. Scroll down the list and choose “Default apps”
  4. Scroll to find “Web browser”
  5. Click the currently selected web browser, by default it’s “Edge”
  6. Pick a browser application from the drop-down list
  7. Close (X) the windows to save your changes

When you open your favorite browser enough times, they can recognize this frequent action and ask if you want to set the default. If this happens, it’s a way to set it, but we hope this instruction will give you the step by step so it’s not hidden to you when it does it.

This completes the instruction we hope it was helpful.

Reset Default apps to original system preferences

If you want to reset the default applications to the system installed preferences, click the Reset button at the bottom of the “Default apps” window.

Manage Search Engine in Microsoft Edge

Now that Windows 10 has introduced the new light-weight and fast browser called Edge, it has reset a few settings. We personally love the new browser and it gives a lot of slim and slender features and choices. Although we like it, we would encourage you to try Edge for a few weeks to see how you like it. These are instructions to help add a new search engine because it’s not intuitive.

These instructions help to do the following:

  • Register/add a new search engine
  • Set a default search engine
  • Remove a search engine

Prepare by loading a search engine to register

  1. Open the Edge browser
  2. The first most important step is to have your search page already loaded in an Edge tab if you are registering a new search engine, if you are setting a new default or removing, you can skip to the next section.
    1. Click your mouse in the top “hidden” area next to the Refresh circle, this is where prior browser text boxes are located. When you blindly click in that area, the URL/Search text box will appear. As a note: we haven’t really liked this “hiding” of the URL/search box, but it does make the page look more simple.
  3. In the URL/Search box type the search page of your choice and load it, repeat this step in a separate tab for as many search engines you want to register.
  4. Here are our favorites (including Bing, but it’s the default already). Click the links below to load them in a new tab:
    1. http://www.google.com
    2. http://duckduckgo.com
    3. http://search.yahoo.com
    4. http://ask.com
    5. and other search engine choices by Wikipedia

Manage search engines

This may be easier if you Pin the Advanced Settings to the right side of the Edge window area. This is done by clicking on the Pin in the top-right corner when you have clicked on step 3.

  1. Click on the ellipses menu button at the top-right of the Edge toolbar
  2. Click the Settings menu option
  3. Click on the View Advanced Settings button at the bottom of the list
  4. Find the entry “Search in the address bar with”, click the drop-down and choose “<Add new>”
  5. A list of all search engines you’ve previously registered or recently loaded in separate tabs will appear
  6. For each entry, click it and choose to Add as default or Add or Remove
  7. This will take you back to the previous page, repeat the process starting with step 4

As we mentioned, it’s not very intuitive to have the search engines loaded in separate tabs first but we hope this is a worthwhile instruction.