Windows 10: Open Microsoft Windows apps using browsers- really easy!

Hey all,


I found a way to open Windows apps like Settings, etc. using browsers. It's really interesting! I only know 2 of them, so if you know any other, please leave them in the replies! :


Settings

So open your favorite browser and type ms-settings: and hit enter. A pop-up will come asking you to open the link with any of the apps. ClickOpen link to open Settings. Whoa! You did it! Instead of searchingin the search bar in Windows, you can open it this way if you have a browser window open.


Photos
It's the same way, but with changes. Type ms-photos: and hit enter in the browser to open Photos app, and follow the same steps I mentioned in the previous heading.


These are the 2 I know. And- I'm not stopping here- you can send a mail to a person directly from the browsers. Just typemailto: and type the recipient's mail address and hit enter. If you've signed in to the Mail app or even Windows, the app will open and will show the draft part i.e., the place where you type the heading and body of the mail. You can then type and send the mail. Easy right?


You can even dial a person with the browser in Windows. Windows comes with a pre- installed dialer app, which is helpful because you can call someone. I haven't called anyone using it, but it does work well.


So, let's try it! Type tel: and type anyone's mobile number and hit Enter. This time it will ask you to pick an app, so click the Choose option or similar option-varies from browsers and head over to C:\Windows\System32in the pop-up and go down until you find the dialer app with the name dialer. Select it and click Open. It will dial right away or something else will happen-Please note that I haven't tried, so I can't say for sure what will happen next. So do this at your own risk. Ask the other experts I'm not an expert, but I help others with what I have in my head in this Community if you encountered an issue or you have any doubts.


Wasn't it interesting? If you have more shortcuts, please leave them as replies below! :


Joe13 B- 2.0

:)

 

Mail app will not open on 10041.

Hello Adam,

This is the suggested solution below if you haven't already tried it.

In this Windows 10 build 10041, the Mail, Calendar, and People apps may be broken due to a licensing issue with the Store Beta. To get these apps working again, you need to follow these steps:

• Open powershell as administrator
• Run the command Get-appxprovisionedpackage –online | where-object {$_.packagename –like “*windowscommunicationsapps*”} | remove-appxprovisionedpackage –online
• Re-install Mail, People and Calendar from the Store (green tile)

 

Web links in other apps take forever to open in browser

Hi,

The issue your experiencing about the hyperlink can happen to one or more of the following reasons:

• The setting where you choose what web browser that you want to use is corrupted. This can cause Windows to misinterpret which browser is set as the default browser on your computer.
• After the software was installed, settings were changed, which can cause links to webpages to work incorrectly.
• A previously installed browser or add-in might be interfering with other software on your computer.
• Registry keys were changed or became corrupted.

You can set Internet Explore or Microsoft Edge as your default browser for opening weblinks in your app and check if the issue will still occur.

We suggest to clear cache and cookies from the Microsoft Edge browser. See steps below:

• Open Microsoft Edge, click on More Action at the right top corner.
• Click on Settings, click on Choose what to clear under Clear browsing data.
• Select the Browsing history, caches and cookies and hit Clear.
• Close the browser and try to open it again.

Let us know if you have any other questions.

 

Can I customize the list of suggest apps in the "Open with" menu?

Well, I hope this helps the OP - it took a while. I tried 'Default Program Editor' (DPE) and it did indeed add (or remove) items, but when I tried to specifically add Word to pdf opening, it failed - it went through the motions, but nothing happened. So I started again, playing with settings for opening .doc files. This seemed to work: initially in explorer I had 3 programs appear in the 'default' list that pops up on a rt-click>open-with:



and this is what the relevant bit of the Registry showed:



Don't ask me why just 3 of those 8 (a to h) programs show up (maybe the 'instant' list is limited to three? - no, see later) - anyway, I used DPE to remove Wordpad from the list: when saving the edit as a REG file, this is what I got:

Code:

and the result in Explorer was:



and the registry now shows:



Note how item 'g' from the list has been removed (it seems there is no issue with having a letter missing). I then messed about trying to open a .doc file with various other programs, and they all started to appear in the 'instant' list:




So I thought 'well, that is easy - just open a pdf once in Word and it should appear'. So back to trying to open PDFs: but however many times I tried, Word would never appear.



even though there were any number of entries in the Registry 'Open With' list, including Word:



So what did DPE make of this - well, it showed some of the entries:



Although Word is shown, it doesn't appear on a rt-click. Its entry can be removed, but that doesn't help. So my attention was drawn to the existence of another folder below 'OpenWithList', namely 'OpenWithProgids', and that contained a specific ref to Sumatra (my preferred program for PDFs). Looking back at the same entry for .docx, I found this:



so I added an identical Word.Document.12 ref to the list for PDFs:



I think IrfanView is there as it got added during my experiments! I now get this in Explorer:


Hurrah! I then tried to use DPE to remove the redundant entries, and got this as a .REG file:
Code:

But when i merge that with the registry, the IrfanView item does not get deleted:



and as seen in the registry:



so I deleted it by hand, and at last have the entries I (or rather, the OP) want:




Note that my manually added reg entry is of type Binary', as there seems to be no way to add a value of type 'None'.

So it seems that DPE cannot cope with entries in the 'Progids' list, and something makes some programs fall into that list, rather than the 'openwithlist'. I am sorry for any typos above, or pictures in the wrong place - can't be bothered to check it too thoroughly. Hope it helps someone!

atb, Martin