Windows 10 Can't change default app?

MikeHawthorne

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Microsoft Community Contributor
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May 25, 2009
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Hi

I'm not able to change my default app for opening photos to Photoshop?
While there are some default formats that are set to Photoshop, things like .Jpg and .Jpeg are set to Windows Photo and don't change when I try and change them.

I was not able to change .Tiff to use Photoshop as default either.

If I want to have the files open by default with Photoshop I have to save then in Photoshop format .Psd.
I have installed a app that made Photoshop .Psd files show thumbnails in File Explorer, and I can set an individual .Psd file as the Desktop background, you can't make a Theme of then because the Theme app does't recognize them as image files, it would see .Tiff files but I can't set that as default either.

So every time I want to open an image file I have to scroll down to Open With and select Photoshop as the application.

Anyone know why after all these years Photoshop Thumbnail files aren't visible in Windows by default?
I've had to install Sage Thumbs in Windows for years to get Photoshop files to display in File Explorer.

I was able to set Photoshop as default on my old computer.

Mike
 
Solution
this is a known bug with two different causes;
one = the new Photoshop 2019 build installs itself next to the old 2018 build (by default this allows them to both work together) because the new build has some major bugs... if you then uninstall the old Photoshop it will remove the file permissions and Adobe is aware of this and working on a fix

two = Microsoft themselves have a bug in the current build that blocks some filetypes from changing their defaults... this is also a known issue that Microsoft admites too
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4462919/windows-10-update-kb4462919

there are two work arounds for the Microsoft bug so far;
install a fresh install of Windows and a fresh install of Adobe Photoshop
or...
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this is a known bug with two different causes;
one = the new Photoshop 2019 build installs itself next to the old 2018 build (by default this allows them to both work together) because the new build has some major bugs... if you then uninstall the old Photoshop it will remove the file permissions and Adobe is aware of this and working on a fix

two = Microsoft themselves have a bug in the current build that blocks some filetypes from changing their defaults... this is also a known issue that Microsoft admites too
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4462919/windows-10-update-kb4462919

there are two work arounds for the Microsoft bug so far;
install a fresh install of Windows and a fresh install of Adobe Photoshop
or
manual edit the regitry to force the correct file type default... this is what I did with the help of Link Removed who remembers more of the old school comand lines than I do and we got it working but it had us both wondering wtf
 
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Solution
Not sure how the program you found renders psd's as thumbnails. There's a pretty simple reason I think they never went ahead with a plugin to explorer because then each PSD file would have to be rendered by Photoshop's engine to create the thumbnail on a folder full of PSD files it had never seen.

Also I don't think any of the regedit entries we attempted worked at all, and using the assoc and ftype command line programs also didn't seem to work, it was your update to 1809 (not recommended for everyone, as it does have some major bugs that can cause data loss) that resolved the issue.
 
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Hi

Well I see there is a new version of Windows 10 available now to early adopters so I'll wait until that's done before I start messing around with this.
It's not that big a deal, just inconvenient, being able to see the thumbnails is the main thing.

I use a program named Sage Thumbs to make the .Psd files show in Windows File Explorer, I've used it for a long time. It makes Windows show thumbnails for several formats that it can't show on it's own. I've just run across a post saying not to install Sage Thumbs because it causes problems in Windows 10, pretty sure I've used it ever since Windows 10 went in to beta, but I'll watch for issues, I'm not seeing any of the thinks mentioned in the post.

Mike
 
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