Windows Photo Viewer Windows 10: Getting It Working Again

Bringing Back Windows Photo Viewer as the Default on Windows 10

Windows 10 quietly retired the classic Windows Photo Viewer in favor of the Photos app, but the older viewer is actually still present in the OS files — it’s just no longer offered in the default “Choose an app” picker for image file types. You can restore it with a registry fix. Save the following as a .reg file and run it (this associates common image extensions with the classic viewer):

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Paint.Picture\shell\open]
"MuiVerb"="@photoviewer.dll,-3043"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Paint.Picture\shell\open\command]
@="%SystemRoot%\\System32\\rundll32.exe \"%ProgramFiles%\\Windows Photo Viewer\\PhotoViewer.dll\", ImageView_Fullscreen %1"

After running it, right-click an image file, choose Open with > Choose another app, tick “Always use this app,” and select Windows Photo Viewer from the list — it should now appear as an option. Repeat per file type (.jpg, .png, .bmp, etc.) as needed, since Windows associates each extension separately.

Still Works on Windows 11 (Updated for 2026)

Good news if you’ve moved on to Windows 11: research confirms photoviewer.dll is still present in Windows 11’s system files (Microsoft kept it around internally for thumbnails and printing), so this exact registry trick still restores Windows Photo Viewer to the right-click “Open with” list on current Windows 11 builds. One Windows 11-specific wrinkle worth knowing: registering the key alone puts it back in the list but won’t make it the default handler automatically — you’ll also need to go to Settings > Apps > Default Apps, search for Windows Photo Viewer, and set it per file type there, since Windows 11’s default-app system requires that explicit per-extension selection rather than letting the right-click “Always use this app” step alone stick as the system default in every case.

Resources

• Download Windows Photo Viewer Registry Edit