How to Make Chrome Default Browser in Windows 11

Every Windows PC comes with default apps to cover all your basic needs. Also, default apps often have a very light footprint and provide you with the better overall performance for your machine relative to their third-party counterpart.

However, the default browser in Windows 11 — ‘Microsoft Edge’, is not a very popular choice among users. More and more users are preferring Google Chrome as their default option since it is much faster and much more fluid to use.

Since you might be reading this on your least favorite browser, let’s not waste time and show you how to make Google Chrome your default browser in Windows 11.

In case you haven’t downloaded it yet, below is a quick refresher for you on how to do that as well.

Install Google Chrome on Windows 11

First, open Microsoft Edge from the ‘Start Menu’ on your Windows 11 PC.

Then, go to google.com/chrome and click on the ‘Download Chrome’ button situated in the center of the website.

It’ll download the ChromeSetup.exe file on your computer. Edge will show a download banner when the download is complete, click on the ‘Open file’ option from the banner box to open the directory in File Explorer where the file is downloaded.

Next, install Google Chrome by double-clicking on the ChromeSetup.exe file from the file explorer, and follow the on-screen instructions.

Make Chrome Your Default Browser in Windows 11

There are two ways you can make Chrome your default browser, one is from your Settings app and the other is from the browser itself. Let’s take a look at both of them.

Set Chrome as Default from Windows Settings

Windows 11 has definitely made it easier to change your default apps by bringing them together in a single place, once you know where to go, it is as plain sailing as it can get.

First, click on the ‘Start Menu’ from the taskbar present at the bottom of your screen.

Then, click on the ‘Settings’ app present on the menu. Alternatively, you can also press Windows + I shortcut on your keyboard to directly open the ‘Settings’ app.

Next, from the Settings screen, click on the ‘Apps’ option from the left panel.

Then, select ‘Default apps’ tile present on the ‘Apps’ settings screen.

On the next screen, you can choose Chrome as your default app by searching for a particular file type or you can search for the ‘Chrome’ app and select the file types it should open by default.

To change the default app to Chrome according to a file/link type, click on the search bar present at the top of the window and enter your desired file type. For instance, we’ll use the .html file type which is the format for web pages on the internet.

Now, the current default app set to open the entered file type will appear on the screen.

To change the default app for .html file type to Chrome, first, click on the current default app set for the file type right under the search bar.

Then, choose ‘Google Chrome’ from the overlay menu and click ‘OK’ to confirm and apply.

Though this is a quick way to change the default app if you want to keep different default apps for the same family of file types, this is not the best choice if the agenda behind changing the default app is to cover the complete blanket of file types supported by it.

To change the default app to Chrome for all of the supported file/link types, you can either search for the Chrome app using the search bar present on the ‘Default Apps’ settings screen or scroll down and locate it manually.

After searching or locating the Chrome app, click on it to see the various file types it supports. For instance, we scrolled down and located the ‘Google Chrome’ app from the list.

On the next screen, you will be able to see all the file types supported by Chrome in a list format.

To set Chrome as the default app for each file or link type it supports, click on the individual default app option under each extension on the screen.

Then choose the ‘Google Chrome’ app from the overlay menu and click on ‘OK’ to confirm and apply.

Now you will need to repeat this process for all the file extensions or link types you want to open with Google Chrome by default.

Set Chrome as Default from Chrome Settings Itself

If you are not very familiar with Windows 11 settings and don’t want to dive deep into it, you don’t have to. Google’s Chrome offers you a handy solution for it from inside the browser itself.

To do so, first click on the ‘Chrome’ icon present on the Start Menu, Windows Taskbar, or from your desktop.

Then, click on the kebab menu (three vertical dots) situated in the upper right corner of your screen.

Next, click on the ‘Settings’ option from the overflow menu.

After that, click on the ‘Default browser’ option situated on the left section of the Chrome window.

Now, click on the ‘Make default’ button present on the screen.

After clicking on the ‘Make default’ button in Chrome, your ‘Default Apps’ window in the system ‘Settings’ will open. You can either choose to set Chrome to be your default option by the file/link type, else you can go to the ‘Chrome’ app menu to set it to default for all the supported file types.

To set Chrome as the default app by file/link type, click on the search bar situated on the top of the page and enter your preferred file type. For instance, we’ll use the https link type which covers almost all links you might click on to reach a website.

Then, click on the current default app tile present under the search bar.

Now, select Google Chrome from the overlay menu and click ‘OK’ to confirm and apply.

To make Chrome default for all the supported file types, you can either use the search bar or scroll down to locate the preferred app. (For instance, we are using the search bar here.)