Ditch Windows 10’s Photos app in favor of the older, less resource-intensive photo viewer.
Since Windows 10 is installed on the majority of computers, users open their images with the Photos app configured by default in the operating system.
While Photos’s interface is quite nice, the application is quite demanding and can have a negative impact on your PC’s performance. On our machine, the Windows 10 Photos app hogs more than twice as much memory compared to the old viewer to open the same image.
However, there is a way to find the old photo viewer that was once built into Windows 7. Here’s how to get it back in Windows 10, with just a few clicks.
1. Download Restore Windows Photo Viewer
Start by downloading Restore Windows Photo Viewer, and unzip the contents of the resulting file. You should get a “restore_windows_photo_viewer.reg” file.
This is an Entry in the Windows registry which will allow you to find the old application.
- Download Restore Windows Photo Viewer for Windows (Free)
2. Run Restore Windows Photo Viewer
Double click on the restore_windows_photo_viewer.reg file to run it. A security warning opens, click the Run button.
Then click Yes in the Do you want to allow this app to make changes to your device window.
Finally, in the Registry Editor alert window, click Yes.
A third window indicating the keys and values ​​contained in [le fichier] were successfully added to the registry. Click OK to close the window.
3. Configure the old photo viewer as the default app
To configure the Windows Photo Viewer, right-click on an image file, in .jpg format for example, position yourself on Open with, and select Choose another application.
Scroll through the displayed suggestions and click More apps if you don’t see Windows Photo Viewer right away.
Once found, click on it, check the box Always use this app to open .jpg / .png / ect files. and validate by clicking on the OK button.
Now every time you open an image on Windows 10, the old Windows viewer will open. You can easily go back and choose to open your images again with the Photos application in Windows 10 by following the same process described above.
You can also go to Windows Settings, in the Applications menu, then in the Default Applications section where you can set the photo viewer to use by default.