OpenWith Enhanced - improving the “Open With” menu. How to set the default program to open a certain type of file in Windows! Restore dropdown menu open with

The “Open with” context menu in the Windows 7 and 8 operating systems does not always have the set of programs the user needs, and sometimes the list of programs in this section of the menu is too large to quickly navigate through. Today we will tell you how you can “tame” the “Open with” section of the context menu.

From time to time, all PC users running the Windows operating system use its context menu, especially the “Open with” item. By right-clicking on a file and selecting “Open with” in the context menu that appears, we see a whole list of programs that the OS offers us to use to open this file. Sometimes this list can be very large, due to incorrect configuration of file associations, or due to the fact that the system has many programs installed that work with this type of file, for example, applications for editing, viewing or playback.

If the list of programs in the “Open with” context menu seems too large to you, and in it it is difficult for you to find the right application to open a particular file, we will tell you how to make sure that this list contains only the applications you have selected, and all the rest, which were in the way, were removed. We will perform all the settings in Windows 7, but they also apply to the new version of this OS - Windows 8 and its 8.1 update.

“Open with” - making changes to the Windows 7 registry

Open the Regedit registry editor, as we have already described many times on our website, for example, or.


That's all. Now your “Open with” context menu will be the way you want it to be. Good luck and stable system operation!

When you right-click on files in Windows 10, 8 and Windows 7, a context menu appears with basic actions for this element, including the “Open with” item and the ability to select a program other than the one selected by default. The list is convenient, but it may contain unnecessary items or may not contain what you need (for example, I find it convenient to have the “Notepad” item in “Open with” for all file types).

This instruction provides details on how to remove items from this section of the Windows context menu, as well as how to add programs to “Open with”. Also separately about what to do if “Open with” is not in the menu (this bug occurs in Windows 10).

How to remove items from the “Open with” section

If you need to remove a program from the “Open with” context menu item, you can do this in the Windows Registry Editor or using third-party programs.

Unfortunately, some items cannot be deleted using this method in Windows 10 - 7 (for example, those that are associated with certain file types by the operating system itself).

Usually, the item disappears immediately. If this does not happen, restart your computer or restart Windows Explorer.

Note: If the program you need is not listed in the registry key above, look to see if it is listed here: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ File_extension\ OpenWithList(including in subsections). If it is not there, then further information will be provided on how you can still remove the program from the list.

Disabling "Open With" menu items in the free OpenWithView program

One of the programs that allows you to customize the items displayed in the “Open with” menu is the free OpenWithView, available on the official website www.nirsoft.net/utils/open_with_view.html(some antiviruses do not like the system software from nirsfot, but it was not noticed in any “bad” things. On the specified page there is also a file with the Russian language for this program, it must be saved in the same folder where OpenWithView is located).

After launching the program, you will see a list of items that can be displayed in the context menu for various file types.

All that is required to remove a program from “Open with” is to click on it and disable it using the red button in the menu at the top, or in the context menu.

Judging by the reviews, the program works in Windows 7, but: when I tested on Windows 10, I was unable to remove Opera from the context menu with its help, however, the program turned out to be useful:

An example of registry locations from point 2, the removal of which can help remove an unnecessary item from “Open with” (similar ones may exist for other programs):

  • HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ SOFTWARE\ Classes\ Program name\ Shell\ Open(I deleted the entire “Open” section).
  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\ Classes\ Applications\ Program name\ Shell\ Open
  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\ Classes\ Program name\ Shell\ Open
  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\ Clients\ StartMenuInternet\ Program name\ Shell\ Open(this point seems to only apply to browsers).

It seems that this is all about deleting items. Let's move on to adding them.

How to add a program to "Open With" in Windows

If you need to add an additional item to the “Open with” menu, then the easiest way to do this is using standard Windows tools:

After opening a file once using the program of your choice, it will permanently appear in the “Open With” list for that file type.

All this can be done using the registry editor, but the path is not the easiest:

Close Registry Editor. Typically, you do not need to restart your computer for the changes to take effect.

What to do if “Open with” is not in the context menu

Some Windows 10 users are faced with the fact that the “Open with” item is not in the context menu. If you have a problem, you can fix it using Registry Editor:

Click OK and close the Registry Editor - the “Open with” option should appear where it should be.

That's it, I hope everything works as expected and required. If not, or if you have additional questions on the topic, leave a comment and I will try to answer.

The context menu item “Open With List” is often used to open startup programs. The Windows operating system offers programs to open the corresponding file. Over time, this list can accumulate quite a lot of programs, sometimes not designed to open the file you want to open.

Quite often there are situations when, in order to open a file unknown to the operating system, the Explorer context menu “Open with” includes programs that are not at all designed to work with the file that needs to be opened.

You can simply try to open a file by mistake and then such a program will be added to the list of programs that are designed to open this file. Therefore, it is advisable to remove the entry about an unnecessary program from the context menu.

  • Attention! Before making changes to the registry of the Windows operating system, it is advisable to create a point or make a backup one. In this way, you will protect your operating system from possible problems or failures that may occur due to erroneous actions with the system registry. After problems occur in the operating system, you will need to perform a system restore, or restore the registry from a previously created registry backup.

Let's consider a situation where the list of programs that are designed for viewing images includes, for example, the text editor Word. In fact, I myself put this program on this list in order to show how to remove an unnecessary program from the “Open with” context menu list.

The example is an image file in JPEG format. When opening a file using the context menu - “Open with”, among the programs designed for this there is the text editor Microsoft Office Word.

You can select the context menu item “Select program...”. In this case, the “Select a program” window will also contain a program that is not intended to open a file of this extension.

Removing from the "Open with" list in the Registry Editor

The incorrectly selected program will need to be removed from the context menu using the Registry Editor. Only one entry will be deleted in the system registry, which relates to a specific program.

You can enter the “Registry Editor” by pressing the “Windows” + “R” keys on your keyboard, and then in the “Run” window you will need to enter the expression “regedit”, and then click on the “OK” button, or press the key on the keyboard "Enter".

You can get to the “Registry Editor” in another way. To do this, go to the “Start” menu, enter the expression “regedit” in the “Search” field, after displaying the search results, you need to click on the image of the “regedit” program.

After the User Account Control window appears, in which you need to agree to the changes, the Registry Editor window appears.

In the “Registry Editor” window, you will need to double-click on the listed items (folders) “HKEY_CURRENT_USER” => “Software” => “Microsoft” => “Windows” => “CurrentVersion” => “Explorer” => “File” Exts."

Full path to the file extension:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.file extension\OpenWithList

In the “File Exts” folder, you need to select the file extension from which in the context menu you want to delete the entry about the program with which you can open the file. In our case, this is the “.jpg” extension. Then in the “OpenWithList” folder you should select the program whose entry you want to delete. In our example, this is “WINWORD.EXE”.

In the window with a warning that appears, you need to click on the “Yes” button.

After these steps, you can close the Registry Editor. The changes made to the registry took effect without restarting the computer.

In the future, when you open a file using the “Open with” context menu item, the unnecessary program will no longer be recorded.

Deleting entries in this registry branch is not always successful.

Look at two more registry branches that may contain entries about “unnecessary” programs:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.file extension\OpenWithList HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.file extension\OpenWithList

If the entry in the context menu remains, also check these registry branches.

Fixing Incorrect File Association

For complex cases where the wrong applications are selected to open many types of files, use any of the 7 methods in Windows.

After following the steps to change the file association, the files will be tearable using the correct applications.

Conclusions of the article

In this way, you can remove unnecessary entries from the “Open with” context menu about programs that were included in this list by mistake. The next time you start the program, unnecessary entries will no longer mislead the user.

How to remove a program from the “Open with” list (video)

When working on a computer in Windows, a situation may arise when a file needs to be opened by one program, but it is always automatically opened by the wrong one. But if you can immediately select a program for opening files, then in the case of opening links, everything is more complicated. For example, you click on a link that came to you in Skype, and the link opens not in the browser where you would like to open it, but in some other one. This happens because a different browser is initially configured to open links in Windows; it is set as the default program for this action. The same applies to any programs, because for each program you can assign the type of files that it will always open. In this article, using Winodows 7 and 10 as an example, I will show how to set default programs to open files of a certain type, as well as links.

Examples for Windows 8 will not be considered in this article, because everything is done there exactly the same as in Windows 7 or Windows 10.

Quickly select a program to open the desired file in any Windows

The easiest way to choose a program to open a file is Windows Explorer. Works the same in all versions of Windows.

With this method, you will have to choose a program to open each type of file. For example, you will have to separately select a program for opening pictures in the .JPG format, then separately the same program for pictures in the .PNG format and all other formats that you use.

You need to right-click (hereinafter referred to as “RMB”) on the file for which you want to select a standard program that will always open it. In the pop-up menu, select “Open with” and a list of main programs (1) through which you can open this file will appear on the right. If the program you need to open your file is in the list, then clicking on it will open the file in it.

This action will open the file in the program of your choice only once. Next time you will have to select the program again.

To save the desired program for opening the selected file type on a permanent basis, or if the desired program is not in list No. 1, and you know that it is definitely installed on the computer, then click “Select another application” (2).

In the window that opens, the list (1) will indicate all programs that can open this file. Select the one you need from the list. If you want to save the selected program for all files of the same type (so that all similar files are always opened immediately in this program), then check the box “Always use this application ...” (2).

This way you can assign a default program for any file type.

This method is not convenient only because for each type of file you have to manually assign a program, even if different types of files can be opened by the same program.

Assigning default programs for all file types and protocols at once through Windows settings

Windows Settings allows you to set default programs for all types of files that the program can open. Also, only through Windows settings can you configure programs that will be used to work with certain protocols, for example, so that all links are opened only in a specific browser.

Below we will show detailed instructions using Windows 10 as an example. The settings for Windows 7 are very similar and will be discussed briefly; there are only minor differences, mainly in the interface). The settings for Windows 8 are completely identical to the settings for Windows 7.

Open Windows Search and type the query “Default Programs”, then select the found “Default Programs” option from the search results and open it.

Information on how to use Windows Search is here

The list will display which program opens what, for example, which program is used as a video player, which is a web browser, etc.

Here you can reassign programs to perform certain actions and open certain files. To do this, you need to click on a program that has already been assigned to an action and select another one from the list (if no program is assigned, then click the “+” button). For example, you want to select a different default browser so that all links from other programs can only be opened through it. To do this, under the “Web browser” heading, click on the already assigned browser (if not assigned, click “+”) and from the list (2) select the browser that we need, through which you want to open all links.

Configuring programs to open certain types of files

You can also set default programs to open certain types of files.

A similar procedure was described above, with the only difference being that in the parameters you can immediately assign programs for all types of files in one place, and not one by one through Explorer.

To go to options for selecting programs that open specific file types, click on the “Select common applications for file types” link.

On the page that opens, in the column on the left (1) all possible file types in Windows will be displayed, and on the right (2) opposite each file type the program that opens these files will be displayed. If a program is not assigned to a certain file type, you can assign it by clicking on the “+” button (3).

Configuring programs to open all types of files and protocols that it can open at once

You can configure the necessary programs so that they open everything that can be opened with them. However, you need to be careful with this setting option, because it may happen that some types of files will not open in the program you would like.

For example, if you set all the files and protocols that it can open for the Google Chrome browser at once, it may turn out that, for example, PDF files will open not in the usual Acrobat Reader program, but in Google Chrome. This is possible because Google Chrome can also open PDF files, and you have configured this browser so that it opens everything it can.

To configure the necessary programs to open all files and protocols that they are only capable of opening at once, go to the “Set default values ​​by application” subsection.

Then, in the list on the left (1), select the program for which you want to set the default to open everything that it can open at once. In the column on the right, click "Set this program as default" (2).

Using Windows 7 as an example

In Windows 7, “Default Programs” for program settings for each type of file opened can also be found through Windows search by typing the query “Default Programs”.

In Windows 7, the Default Programs window looks like this:

To select programs to perform certain actions in the system, you need to open “Setting program access and defaults.”

In the window that opens, you need to open the “Other” category; below in the list, you can assign the necessary programs for each action.

To set programs to open certain file types, in the “Default Programs” section, open the “Match file types or protocols to specific programs” item.

In the window, all that remains is to assign the necessary programs to open the required file types. To do this, select the file type from the list (1) and click “Change program” (2).

In order to set the desired default programs for opening all files that it is capable of opening and for all protocols, open the “Set default programs” subsection.

In the list on the left, select the desired program (1), and then on the right click “Set this program as default” (2).

Conclusion

The ability to set default programs for opening certain files will allow you to easily solve possible problems in Windows when, for example, links from Skype or some other programs open in the wrong browser. Or some video files are opened through the wrong player. The instructions above will help you match the right programs with the right files so that everything is as convenient for you.

That's all! Have a nice day and good mood! ;)



 

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