You will probably be confronted with a SmartScreen error saying that 'Windows protected your PC' from this app (the color may be red).

No matter how you download EdgeDeflector, Windows 11 will likely give you a warning message when you launch the installer. Discover how you can set up Google Chrome as your default email link opener, how to undo that setting and how to set up other default browsers for mailto. Note that, if you attempt to download this program in Edge browser, the browser will attempt to block it, claiming it is unsafe (thanks Microsoft we're sure your motives are pure here) and you can click 'keep' to make it download, but you're better off downloading in another browser anyway.

However, there's a freeware app called EdgeDeflector that fools Windows 11 (or 10) into redirecting these links to your default browser. No matter what you have chosen in the Settings->Default Apps menu, it will still open these links in Microsoft Edge. Sadly, like Windows 10 before it, Windows 11 does not honor your default browser choice when you click on any web links that appear in Windows Search or in the news widgets.

Setting the Default Browser for Search and News However, you can also set your preferred browser to open PDFS or more obscure formats such as XHTML and SHTML. At this point, you could stop and your default browser would be changed for all Web URLS you click on and even for local HTML files on your hard drive / SSD, which for most people is what matters.

Google chrome sign in default