Microsoft purposefully makes switching away from Edge as your default browser more difficult than it needs to be. However, Mozilla has simplified the process with a little bit of reverse engineering.
As The Verge reports, Microsoft makes reverting to Edge as the defaul browser a one-click process, but this method isn’t available to any other browser. The functionality clearly exists, so Mozilla’s software engineers took the time to reverse engineer it. With the launch of Firefox 91 last month, setting it as the default browser became a one-click process.
Mozilla decided to stay quiet about the new feature, which has been available since Aug. 10. Long-time users of the browser probably didn’t notice because they’d already used the old method of making Firefox the default in a previous version. Only new users would notice, and therefore wouldn’t realize it had changed to become simpler.
Microsoft may not be too happy about this, but with Windows 11 arriving next month it may not care enough to take action. That’s because Windows 11 makes it even more difficult to change the default browser away from Edge. You’re going to have to change every file type associated with the web to open with your browser of choice. That means .html, .svg, .pdf, .ftp, and the list goes on. Hopefully Mozilla figures out how to reverse engineer that process, too, because you can guarantee Microsoft will have a one-click method of resetting every file type to use Edge.
