A top Apple executive defended the tech giant’s decision to make Google the default search engine on Apple iPhones and Macs, saying there was no “valid alternative.’’
While I agree that it’s fine they make their own browser the default on their operating systems, I wouldn’t say it’s easy to change the default browser in Windows 11.
Edge shows a popup when visiting official download sites of other browsers. I remember seeing “Edge is like Chrome but with the added trust of Microsoft” when downloading Chrome using Edge. Then you have to go into Windows settings, default apps, scroll until you see your browser of choice and click “Set as default” or something. Then it might beg you to keep Edge the default.
And even after supposedly setting a default browser, using search from the start menu still uses Bing and opens results in Edge. Outlook started to have its own (somewhat hard to find) setting that has “Edge” or “default browser” as options. Guess what the option selected by default is?
Windows can also show you a “finish setting up Windows” assistant every now and then when you login, which sets Edge and Bing as the defaults unless you skip it (which isn’t the big, bright, blue button, but a plain link somewhere).
All this together makes it very hard to change your default browser and keep it that way, especially for your average consumer.
I wouldn’t know anything about Windows 11. The last Windows I used personally was XP. We use Windows 7 at work and it’s annoying because we have 3 different browsers and we have to use each of them depending upon which company intranet site were viewing because the sites don’t all work with all browsers. I don’t know why, but I assume that has something to do with Microsoft.
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While I agree that it’s fine they make their own browser the default on their operating systems, I wouldn’t say it’s easy to change the default browser in Windows 11.
Edge shows a popup when visiting official download sites of other browsers. I remember seeing “Edge is like Chrome but with the added trust of Microsoft” when downloading Chrome using Edge. Then you have to go into Windows settings, default apps, scroll until you see your browser of choice and click “Set as default” or something. Then it might beg you to keep Edge the default.
And even after supposedly setting a default browser, using search from the start menu still uses Bing and opens results in Edge. Outlook started to have its own (somewhat hard to find) setting that has “Edge” or “default browser” as options. Guess what the option selected by default is?
Windows can also show you a “finish setting up Windows” assistant every now and then when you login, which sets Edge and Bing as the defaults unless you skip it (which isn’t the big, bright, blue button, but a plain link somewhere).
All this together makes it very hard to change your default browser and keep it that way, especially for your average consumer.
I wouldn’t know anything about Windows 11. The last Windows I used personally was XP. We use Windows 7 at work and it’s annoying because we have 3 different browsers and we have to use each of them depending upon which company intranet site were viewing because the sites don’t all work with all browsers. I don’t know why, but I assume that has something to do with Microsoft.