I had a problem with Firefox and switched to Waterfox. All was well. Then a couple of years later, I wanted to switch back to Firefox because %reasons%. When FF started it asked if I wanted to set it as the default browser. Yes, thanks. Windows opened an applet to let me change the default browser and . . . Firefox was not on the list. I couldn’t select it as it was not there. Waterfox was masquerading as Firefox. This was the case everywhere in the system.
I right-click-> ‘open with’ changed the default program for .html documents, and that worked! But it only worked for that one filetype. There are also .htm, .xht and .xhtml to consider. This is not elegant and there must be an easier way.
Reinstalling wouldn’t help; this was a fresh installation of Firefox.
The Default Apps applet didn’t help, this wasn’t on the list of options.
Default Programs from the Classic Control Panel didn’t help. It was not on the list of options.
Bringing up the Set Defaults app (win+R -> ms-settings:defaultapps) didn’t work. I was able to change .htm but the other two didn’t have Firefox listed as options, I guess because they were listed as protocols instead of filetypes.
The ONLY thing that worked, and it only took a quick moment, was found at appuals.com where there is listed a simple shell command to execute. I didn’t even need an elevated (run as Administrator) command prompt! This was SUPER easy.
Type the following, press the following keys on your keyboard:
- Press the Start button or your Windows key
- cmd
- Enter
- “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\uninstall\helper.exe” /SetAsDefaultAppGlobal
- Enter
Bam. Firefox is your default browser again. Thanks Jesus I finally found it, and thanks Keven Arrows for the writeup!
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