According to this report by Tech Radar,, Microsoft have sneakily backtracked on a change they introduced with Windows 11 which made it very hard to change your default browser. The original change meant that users had to separately set the default browser for each type of file that a browser might open (e.g. .htm, .html, .pl, .pdf, .aspx, to name but a few - to see a more extensive list, see here). This was a very time consuming task, and complex enough to discourage many users. The latest update allows users to change their default browser with a single click.

It should be remembered that Microsoft only introduced the ability for users to change the default browser because they were forced to by the EU. By making it much harder to make this change, Microsoft were trying to bypass the intent of the agreement that they made with the EU. I suspect that Microsoft's legal department realised that they were running the risk of the EU case against them being reopened, or maybe they were warned by the EU.

I suspect that many of you don't care much which browser you use, but sometimes there are good reasons to care:

• I occasionally find web-sites that simply do not work with some browsers - if you find that your browser doesn't work with a site that you need to use, you will probably want to change your default browser to one that works with that site;
• Web-site developers often need to test their work with multiple browsers, and it is common for them to use multiple virtual machines, each with a different default browser, for such testing;
• Some browsers have much better security and privacy protection than others, and if you care about these things (as everyone should) you will probably want to change your default browser.