Windows 10: W10 Search: change "Best Match" result OR display "Apps" by default OR remove native apps...

Today my W10 has upgrated to 2004. Until yesterday, I could press winkey, type "fo" and press Enter to launch foobar2000 (app). But now it's opening Photos ("Fotos" in my language), which is a default Windows app. How to fix this?

I know I can type "app:fo" or "foo", but I want to keep typing just "fo". I'll list three possible solutions, but I don't know how to do any of them.

• 
  Change some config to display Apps tab by default instead of All, because in Apps foobar2000 is the first result.
  
  
• 
  Remove Photos (Fotos) from results. If it was a normal shortcut I could remove it from Windows\Start Menu\Programs folder, but it isn't so I don't know where it is.
  
  
• 
  Simply a way to customize the "Best Match". This would be the optimal solution. Windows should be smart enough to know the most common result I open after typing each sequence of chars so that it sorts accordingly in the next search. That's what "best match" means, right? Every browser do this in location bar, they learn with our habits.
  

I don't want a workaround like "you can set a hotkey like Ctrl+Shift+F to open foobar2000", I want to keep using W10 search.

submitted by /u/javafe
[link] [comments]

:)

 

How to change default app for file type

'Open With > Choose another app' has three step, in the first it only offers apps registered for that file type. If you click 'More apps' it lists all registered apps regardless of suitability. Both these steps have the tick-box for 'Always use...' in my 18363.752. The third step, if needed, is 'Look for another app on this PC'. The 'Always use...' must be ticked before taking this step if you want the change to stick. However, WMP appears at the second step.

For a quick look at a JPG almost anything (including WMP) is more practical than Photos which on my system takes more than ten seconds just to open a photo. The OP is probably not aware that the Windows Photo Viewer is still available in W10, but hidden away. That's my default viewer for JPG.


Restore Windows Photo Viewer in Windows 10

And, once enabled, is available in Settings > Apps > Default apps.

 

Most stock Store apps displayed as "ms-resource:AppName" in search results

For many months now, I noticed that the standard windows Calculator app, which I use often, no longer was displayed as "Calculator" in the search results, but as "ms-resource:AppName". It didn't bother me too much since I could still type "calc" (or rather,
the German equivalent "rech") to have it bring up the Calculator shortcut, even though the name was not displayed.

However, since installing the May 2020 feature update, this has changed, and typing "calc"/"rech" into search no longer brings up the calculator shortcut. I figured out that I can now only find the Calculator anymore by actually searching for the displayed
name, e.g. by typing "AppName". The search results will then show me a list of suggestions, and it seems that most stock Windows apps at this point are displayed as either "ms-resource:AppName" or "ms-resource:AppName/Text", instead of by their actual names.
This includes Alarms & Clock, Calculator, Calendar, Voice Recorder, and others; all third-party apps and a few remaining stock apps seem fine. The start menu shortcuts of these applications also show their correct name, it's only the search results that are
affected.





As you can see, it's still possible to distinguish what app each result refers to by looking at the icon. But, needless to say, this is a very cumbersome way of starting these apps.

Here are a few things I already tried:

• Reboot the system
• Check for new updates (I'm all up-to-date)
• Update the affected apps through Windows Store
• Reset the affected apps
• Uninstall and reinstall the affected apps
• Run the Microsoft Store troubleshooter – it didn't do anything
• Use an ugly way of forcing Windows to rebuild the Start Menu database

Out of these, only the last one had any effect at all: it fixed the name for the Calendar app, which now is displayed as "Calendar" again, instead of "ms-resource:AppName". However, subsequently performing that step repeatedly doesn't fix the display names
of any other apps; Calendar is the only one I could get fixed.

How can I get my apps to display properly again?

 

How is it possible that result of ftype and the default app don't match?

I remember from Windows 7 that I can change the default program that is used to open a file type (e.g. .txt) by using assoc and ftype and as help ftype on Windows 10 implies, this should still work:

But it doesn't seem to work that way on Windows 10: It always uses the program that is set in the windows settings (or alternatively via the file properties) as the default app. This app does not necessarily match the one that was set and is displayed by ftype.

I have tried this for multiple file types (.txt .py .cpp, ...) and also restarted the system after the changes. A screenshot of the missmatch (Windows built-in notepad as result of ftype but notepad++ as default app) is attached.

Screenshot of result of ftype and the Windows settings for the default apps

Therefore my question is why this two things don't match, and what even is the point of the settings via ftype (as far as I have tested it is always overruled by the default app and therefore never used).

Imho not a duplicate of this question because he can't even set the file association via "conventional methods" which works just fine for me and therefore seems to have another problem.