How to remove apps from the Open With list On Windows 10
When you right-click a file on Windows 10, the context menu has an Open With option. If you select it, a menu opens listing apps that can open the file. You can search for and select other apps from this menu, and set the default app that will always open that particular file type. Windows 10 isn’t very smart about the apps it lists. If you’re seeing apps in the Open With list that shouldn’t be there, you can remove them. In order to remove apps from the Open With list you need an app called OpenWithView.
EditĀ Open With list
Download and run OpenWithView. It’s a free app that doesn’t need to be installed however, you do need admin rights to run it.
When run, the app will list all the apps that appear in the Open With list for a file. This list doesn’t sort itself by file type i.e., some apps will only appear in the Open With list for images, whereas others will only be listed for audio files. Windows 10 does make that distinction however, OpenWithView won’t.
The apps are listed in alphabetical order. To remove an app from the context menu, select it from the list and select ‘Disable Selected Items’.
When you disable an app, it will no longer appear in the Open With list with one exception. If the app is meant to open a specific file type, then the app will still appear in the list.
For example, I disabled Notepad.exe from the OpenWith list. It didn’t appear in the list when I right-clicked images or video files however, it was still the first choice when I right-clicked a TXT file.
Adding an app back to the Open With list is just as easy as removing it. Select it, and right-click it. From the context menu, select the ‘Enable Selected Item’ option. The one shortcoming this app has is that it cannot remove UWP apps from the Open With list. Given that this app is running on Windows 10, and all stock apps, and a few other select apps like Netflix, are UWP apps, this is a pretty big shortcoming.
If you have apps that are crowding the Open With list and you want to trim it down quickly and easily, this is the way to do it. You could also do this without the OpenWithView app by editing the Windows registry however, this app makes it safer and easier to reverse any changes you’ve made.
