XPS Viewer was introduced many years ago by Microsoft as replacement of the popular PDF format. It didn’t replace the PDF file format, however it has become an alternative feature to have on a Windows PC. Starting in 2018, Microsoft decided not to install XPS Viewer on the Windows computers by default. Their stance has not changed for Windows 11 either. If you want to use Microsoft XPS Viewer on your Windows 11 PC, then you will have to install it first.
Here is how we can install Microsoft XPS Viewer on Windows 11 in seconds:
- Press the hotkey Win+I to open Windows settings. Alternatively, you can first open the Start menu and then select Settings from there.
- In the settings window, select Apps and then Optional Features.
- Click on the View Features button displayed next to Add an optional feature.
- In the new window that appears, scroll down the list of available features and select XPS Viewer. It is the last feature on the list. After than you have to click on the Next button.
- The feature will be installed on your Windows 11 PC and to be on the safe side, you should restart your PC before starting to use XPS Viewer.
Other than installing it using the above steps, we can also manually download XPS Viewer installer from the internet and install it using that. There are many third-party XPS Viewer apps available on the internet which might have more features than the one designed by the Microsoft. We can also use Reader app from Microsoft Store at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/reader/9wzdncrfhwg5. This app is able to open and display PDF, XPS and TIFF documents easily.
If you prefer a small open-source tool to view XPS documents, then you can try XPSView (https://github.com/codeprof/xpsview) which can open XPS and OXPS files. It is very small and lightweight XPS Viewer.