EdgeDeflector VS ExplorerPatcher

I used to use Bing to DuckDuckGo in conjunction with EdgeDeflector to ensure all links that open Edge and Bing redirect to Firefox and DDG instead, but EdgeDeflector no longer works now, so I guess I don't need that extension anymore. Thanks for pointing that out, I hadn't realized till now that the extension wasn't necessary anymore.

There's also the dark bit where changing your default browser in Windows doesn't apply globally.

That is, some UI widgets will still open Edge even if you change the default.

There used to be an awesome open source project called EdgeDeflector that would fix that. Microsoft got wise to it and found a way to neutralize it, which killed the project. https://github.com/da2x/EdgeDeflector

1) Install EdgeDeflector. (Note: Edge deflector is deprecated without the next fix. You no longer need to browse into Default Apps to select EdgeDeflector).

It’s a very intentional thing that Microsoft ignores the default browser in many cases. They’ve already killed one workaround tool that fixes this: https://github.com/da2x/EdgeDeflector

Idk if Edgeeflector can actually overcome this but it worth a try yk

*cough* edgedeflector *cough*

It probably opens Edge anyway, so you could use EdgeDeflector to handle the browser opening.

You can use https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher to change the hotkey

> Windows 11 brings absolutely nothing on the table

It also removes a leg from the table, the one labelled 'usability'.

Attaching a 3rd-party leg to fill the gap helps (https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher), but it's not an ideal solution

ExplorerPatcher

I had more problems with it being wide, merging all app windows in a single icon, showing only icon rather then app title, and not being able to move to top of screen

That may be fixed with https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher which restores win10 bar, there's no builtin solution to any of the above afaik

Thanks for letting me know. I looked into it, and apparently it's still even possible to activate on later versions of Windows with registry edits and helper software: https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher/discussions/167

Not going to install something that seems so vague, but I do use ExplorerPatcher [1] on my Windows 11 machines to basically re-create Windows 10 UI and fix all of the annoyances I have with Windows 11. I've got the old right click menu, the old task bar, the old alt-tab interface, pretty much the whole thing. Only reason I use Windows 11 over Windows 10 is because Windows 11 seems to handle my triple monitor setup better, especially when waking up from sleep.

[1] - https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher