GUIDE

How to change the default photo viewer on Windows 11

23 August 2026

Double-clicking a picture opens Photos, and you would rather it opened something else. The short version: Windows will not let any app make itself the default — you have to set it, per file type, and Windows 11 made that more tedious than Windows 10 did. Here is exactly where, and why the app you are installing cannot do it for you.

The free way: set it from the right-click menu

This is the fastest route and it needs nothing installed.

  1. Right-click any .png file.
  2. Choose Open with, then Choose another app.
  3. Pick the app you want.
  4. Tick Always use this app to open .png files, then OK.

You can also do it from Settings → Apps → Default apps. Search for the file type (not the app) and set the handler there.

Why you have to do it more than once

Windows 11 sets defaults per file extension, not per category. Setting .png does nothing for .jpg, and .jpg does nothing for .jpeg, which is a different extension for the same format. To cover ordinary photos you generally need .png, .jpg, .jpeg, .webp, .bmp and .gif.

Windows 10 let one choice cover a whole category. Windows 11 removed that, which is why this feels like it used to be easier — it was.

Why no app can do it for you

Since Windows 8 the choice is stored with a per-user, per-extension hash that only Windows itself can write. Programs that forge it get flagged by security software, so a reputable app will never claim to set itself as your default. What it can legitimately do is register itself so it appears in the Open-with list, add its own right-click verb, and send you to the right Settings page.

If an installer offers to “make this your default photo viewer” and it happens without you confirming anything in a Windows dialog, that is worth being suspicious of.

What Clarus adds

Clarus registers as an image handler when you install it, so it shows up under Open with straight away, and image files gain an Edit with Clarus entry in the right-click menu whatever your default stays. On Windows 11 that entry sits under Show more options, because the top-level menu is reserved for packaged apps.

Opening a picture gives you a viewer rather than an editor: fit, zoom, pan, rotate, and the arrow keys walk the rest of the folder. When you actually want to change something, Edit puts it straight into the annotation editor — arrows, text, step numbers, blur — and your original file is never written over.

Settings → Advanced → Windows shows whether Clarus currently is your default and opens the Windows picker for you. It reports the real answer rather than assuming, because the only place that decision lives is Windows.

One limit worth knowing

Clarus opens PNG, JPG, JPEG, WebP, BMP and GIF. It deliberately does not register for TIFF, RAW or PSD: it would appear in the list and then fail to display them, which is worse than not being offered at all.

Which to choose

If Photos is fine and you only ever look at pictures, leave it — it is already installed and it costs nothing. Clarus is worth setting as the default if you spend as much time marking pictures up as looking at them, because the gap between opening one and editing it is a single click instead of a second application.

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