Checking the default browser manually is easy: run
START ms-settings:defaultapps
and take a look at the Web browser setting.
Or run
START http://?
to open the default browser with its default (home) page(s), and check.
The true challenge is to get the default browser without human interaction.
I have seen many techniques and registry keys mentioned on the web, but so far none was reliable.
They all keep telling me my default browser is Internet Explorer, and I can assure you it isn't!
Techniques using ASSOC (which actually searches HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Classes\.html) and using its result in FTYPE (searches HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Classes\ with ASSOC result appended, e.g. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Classes\htmlfile) did work back in the Windows XP and 7 era, but they no longer do in Windows 10.
Joe Caverly and Steve Robertson provided me with the "new" registry value locations:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.html\UserChoice\ProgID for local HTML files, and
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Associations\UrlAssociations\http\UserChoice\ProgID for http(s) URLs.
This will return values like FirefoxHTML-308046B0AF4A39CB.
To get the executable path, look in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, e.g. HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\FirefoxHTML-308046B0AF4A39CB\shell\open\command
which will return the path to the default browser's executable, e.g. "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe".
| Note: | Unlike REG.EXE, PowerShell cannot read directly from HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, it would require WMI to access that hive.However, a "copy" of HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT can be found in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes. |
See GetDefaultBrowser.bat for more details.
page last modified: 2023-03-22; loaded in 0.0071 seconds
