How to Set Default Programs in Windows 8

Windows 8 has turned out to be a secure and stable operating system. While it has everything that you would expect from an operating system, I found it very annoying that it does not have a DVD player software installed by default. So I set out to use the open source VLC media player that is known as the swiss knife of videos. It can almost any kind of media file whether its audio file, video file or a disk. To use VLC media player as your default media player, you have to set it as your default program for all the file types it supports. Here is how you can set a program to be the default program in Windows 8:

  1. Press Windows Logo Key + X when on the Start Screen. Select Control Panel from the menu that appears, to open the Control Panel.

    Set Default Programs in Windows 8

  2. In the Control Panel, navigate to Programs → Default Programs and click on the link that says Set your default programs.

    Set Default Programs in Windows 8

  3. Select a program from the list on the left side. For a program to be displayed in the list, you must have installed it on your system. For example, the VLC Media Player appears in this list only after you have installed it. After selecting the program, you can click on the Set this program as default to set it as default for all the supported file types and protocols. However if you want to selectively choose which file types and protocols it should be associated with, then you can click on the Choose defaults for this program and select the file types before you click the OK button.

    Set Default Programs in Windows 8

  4. That’s it. You have now set the selected program as default. Now you can just double-click on the supported file types and they would open in that program. For me, I have set VLC media player as default media player and now it can run DVD and Blue Ray disks automatically as I insert them in my PC.