Enable Windows Photo Viewer Your Default Image Viewer on Windows 10

Windows 10 comes with many new features and apps that make your work easy and more convenient. Among these, an application named "Microsoft Photos" is using as a default Photo application. But many people still prefer the old Photo Viewer named "Windows Photo Viewer" in the earlier version of Windows, which we are missing in Windows 10, which seems to preview the images much faster than the Photo app.

If you upgrade a running PC from Windows 7 or 8.1 to Windows 10, "Windows Photo Viewer" will be available and you can set it as your default photo viewer if you want. However, if you perform a clean installation of Windows 10 you can’t access Photo Viewer at all. The interesting thing is that Windows Photo Viewer is still there. It’s just hidden and you’ll have to make a couple of Registry edits to show up it. After you do that, you can set it as your default photo viewer.

Enable Windows Photo Viewer Your Default Image Viewer on Windows 10:

Follow the steps given below to enable and Windows Photo Viewer in Windows 10.

Step One:

Download and Unzip the file: Activate-Windows-Photo-Viewer-on-Windows-10.zip
Inside, you’ll find two .reg File for Active and Deactivate Windows Photo Viewer.
Double click the “Activate Windows Photo Viewer on Windows-10”  to create the keys and values in the Registry and activate Photo Viewer.
If you ever want to deactivate it and set default image viewer, just run the “Deactivate Windows Photo Viewer on Windows-10”.

Step Two:

Now right-click on any type of image file and select Open With > Choose Another App.

Click the More apps option, select "Windows Photo Viewer" in the list and check the "Always use this app to open .__ files" checkbox, and then click OK.

Windows Photo Viewer will now be the default Image Viewer for that type of image file. You’ll need to repeat this process for each type of image file which you want to open with it. In other words, whenever you open an image that opens in Photos app, just close the Photos app and use the “Open with” menu to associate that file type with Windows Photo Viewer. You should only have to do this a few times.

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