{"id":99985,"date":"2018-10-16T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-10-16T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/?p=99985"},"modified":"2019-12-21T08:06:38","modified_gmt":"2019-12-21T16:06:38","slug":"20181016-00","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20181016-00\/?p=99985","title":{"rendered":"Why does Windows ask me to pick a program with which to open a file, even when I already specified which program I want to use to open the file?"},"content":{"rendered":"

So you’re working at your computer, everything is humming along just fine, and then when you double-click a file, instead of launching the associated application, Windows asks you what program you want to use to launch the document. Why doesn’t it just follow the instructions you gave it already?<\/p>\n

A customer installed a new program that supports XYZ files, but was careful not to let that program take over as the XYZ file handler. But when they double-click a XYZ file, they still get the “How do you want to open this file?” dialog.<\/p>\n

\n
How do you want to open this file?<\/div>\n
Keep using this app<\/div>\n
\n\n\n\n
\u22d0<\/span><\/td>\nContoso Deluxe
\nThe industry leader in XYZ visualization<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Other options<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n\n\n\n
\u2112<\/span><\/td>\nLitWare Light
\nNew<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n
\n\n\n\n
\u00a0<\/td>\nLook for an app in the Store<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n
More apps \u2186<\/div>\n
\u2610 Always use this app to open .xyz files<\/div>\n
\n
OK<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

“Could you please confirm whether this is expected behavior? If so, what is it that changes when a new app is installed that triggers this prompt?”<\/p>\n

Yes, this is expected.<\/p>\n

If an app is installed that registers support for a file type, then the next time you launch a file of that type, Windows will confirm that you want to stay with the app you have, rather than switch to the new one.<\/p>\n

You should be prompted only once per file type, at least until you install another app that registers for that file type.<\/p>\n

Why does Windows prompt you one more time after installing a program that supports the file type?<\/p>\n

Well, you may have installed that program with the intention of making it the default handler. Or conversely, a recently-installed program may have forced itself as the default handler (possibly by nefarious means), and this gives you a chance to switch it back.<\/p>\n

In both cases, the dialog saves you a trip to the Choose default apps by file type<\/i> settings page, which is important because most users don’t even realize that such a page even exists.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s just double-checking after the situation has changed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[104],"class_list":["post-99985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-tipssupport"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

It’s just double-checking after the situation has changed.<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}