Microsoft has made a bad habit of promoting its in-house web browser at the expense of user preferences. Fortunately, there is a workaround to prevent Windows from using Edge by default without your consent.
For years now, Microsoft has behaved like that rather clumsy student at the back of the class who wants people to take an interest in him. The Redmond firm has indeed taken the very bad habit of trying by all means to force Windows users to use its home tools. Among the best-known examples, Microsoft has in the past displayed advertisements urging to use its home web browser Edge rather than that of the competition. More recently, the American company deliberately made Windows 11 Settings more complex to prevent users from easily choosing Google Chrome, Firefox, or any competing web browser as their default web browser.
Microsoft has more than one trick up its sleeve and intends to show it to try to impose its own web browser. Let’s be honest, even though Microsoft Edge has made incredible strides since switching to Chromium (it’s just as efficient as Chrome, thanks Chromium), enforcing its use without user consent at all to displease. Microsoft’s latest discovery is the use of a new protocol, microsoft-edge: //, which is responsible for generating links within native Windows applications that can only be opened in Microsoft Edge. This attempt, which clearly benefits him, can however be stopped quite simply with the help of a free utility. Here’s how.
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1. Download Edge Deflector
First, download Edge Deflector on your PC. This free utility was created especially to intercept all URLs using the protocol set up by Microsoft to force them to open in Edge, and automatically redirects them to the browser configured by default in the operating system.
2. Install the program
Open the EdgeDeflector_install executable file that you just downloaded, and then in the window that appears, click the Install button.
At the end of the installation, EdgeDeflector opens a web page with English instructions to configure it. Close this window and open Windows Settings.
3. Configure EdgeDelector
In the Windows Settings panel, select Applications in the left column, then enter the Default Applications menu.
Go down to the bottom of the window to reach the section Associated parameters, and click on Choose default values ​​by link type.
In the search box at the top of the window, type Microsoft-Edge, then in the list of results that appears, click MICROSOFT-EDGE.
Windows should try to dissuade you from making a change and display a window Before making the switch. Click Edit Anyway.
Then select EdgeDeflector in the pop-up titled How would you like to open this type of item, then validate by clicking on the OK button. Then close the Windows Settings window.
4. Check that the change has been taken into account
To check that the modification has been taken into account, you must click on a link generating a link using the protocol microsoft-edge: // in order to verify that it no longer opens in Edge but in your usual web browser, configured by default in Windows.
To do this, click for example on Windows Widgets, then on one of the links displayed. The link should then open in your usual web browser and no longer in Microsoft Edge as the Redmond company wishes to impose.