How to Make Chrome Default Browser in Windows 11

Every Windows PC comes with default apps to cover all of your basic needs. Additionally, default apps often have a very light footprint and give you the best overall performance for your machine compared to their third-party counterparts.

However, Windows 11’s default browser – “Microsoft Edge”, is not a very popular choice among users. More and more users prefer Google Chrome as the default option because it is much faster and much smoother to use.

Since you might be reading this on your least favorite browser, let’s not waste time and show how to make Google Chrome your default browser in Windows 11.

If you haven’t downloaded it yet, below is a quick reminder on how to do that as well.

Install Google Chrome on Windows 11

First, open Microsoft Edge from the “Start Menu” on your Windows 11 PC.

Then go to google.com/chrome and click on the “Download Chrome” button located in the center of the website.

It will download the ChromeSetup.exe file on your computer. Edge will display a download banner when the download is complete, click the “Open File” option in the banner area to open the directory in File Explorer where the file is downloaded.

Then install Google Chrome by double clicking on the ChromeSetup.exe from File Explorer and follow the onscreen instructions.

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Make Chrome your default browser in Windows 11

There are two ways to make Chrome your default browser, one from your Settings app and one from the browser itself. Let’s take a look at both.

Set Chrome as Default from Windows Settings

Windows 11 has definitely made it easy to change your default apps by having them all in one place, once you know where to go it’s as easy as it gets.

First, click on the ‘Start Menu’ in the taskbar present at the bottom of your screen.

Then click on the ‘Settings’ application present in the menu. Alternatively, you can also press Windows + I shortcut on your keyboard to directly open the “Settings” application.

Then, from the Settings screen, click on the “Apps” option in the left panel.

Then, select the “Default applications” tile present on the “Applications” settings screen.

On the next screen, you can choose Chrome as the default app by searching for a particular file type, or you can search for the “Chrome” app and select the file types it should open by default.

To change the default app to Chrome based on a file type / link, click on the search bar at the top of the window and enter the desired file type. For example, we will use the .html file type which is the format of web pages on the Internet.

Now the current default application set to open the entered file type will appear on the screen.

To change the default application for .html file type to Chrome, first click on the current default application set for the file type just below the search bar.

Then choose “Google Chrome” from the overlay menu and click “OK” to confirm and apply.

While this is a quick way to change the default app if you want to keep different default apps for the same file type family, it’s not the best choice if the goal behind the Application modification by default is to cover full coverage of file types. supported by it.

To change the default app to Chrome for all supported file / link types, you can either search for the Chrome app using the search bar present on the “Default apps” settings screen, or you can scroll down and locate it manually.

After you’ve searched for or located the Chrome app, click on it to see the different file types it supports. For example, we have scrolled down and located the “Google Chrome” app in the list.

On the next screen, you will be able to see all the file types supported by Chrome in a list format.

To set Chrome as the default app for each supported file or link type, click the individual default app option under each extension on the screen.

Then choose the “Google Chrome” application from the overlay menu and click “OK” to confirm and apply.

You will now need to repeat this process for any file extensions or link types that you want to open with Google Chrome by default.

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Set Chrome as default from Chrome settings itself

If you’re not very familiar with Windows 11 settings and don’t want to dive into them, you don’t have to. Google’s Chrome gives you a convenient solution from within the browser itself.

To do this, first click on the “Chrome” icon in the Start menu, the Windows taskbar or from your desktop.

Then click on the kebab menu (three vertical dots) located at the top right of your screen.

Then click on the “Settings” option in the overflow menu.

After that, click on the “Default Browser” option located on the left side of the Chrome window.

Now click on the “Default” button present on the screen.

After clicking the “Set as Default” button in Chrome, your “Default Applications” window in the system “Settings” will open. You can either choose to set Chrome as the default option based on the file / link type, otherwise you can go to the “Chrome” app menu to set it as the default for all supported file types.

To set Chrome as the default application by file / link type, click the search bar at the top of the page, and enter your preferred file type. For example, we will use the https type of link that covers almost any link that you can click to go to a website.

Then click on the current default app tile present below the search bar.

Now select Google Chrome from the overlay menu and click “OK” to confirm and apply.

To set Chrome as the default for all supported file types, you can either use the search bar or scroll down to locate the preferred app. (For example, we use the search bar here.)

Next, click on the Chrome app tile in the search results.

On the next screen, you will be able to see all the file types supported by Chrome in a list format.

Now click on the individual default app option under each file type on the screen to change the default app to Chrome.

Then click on Google Chrome on the overlay menu and click “OK” to confirm and apply.

You will now have to repeat the process for all types of files / links that you want to open with Google Chrome.

That’s it, Google Chrome has been set as the default browser on Windows 11.