How To Change Your Default Media Files

Everybody wants a piece of the pie, I always say– your pie! Whenever you download a new music player, for example, that new music player may (and often does) take over ALL media files associations on your computer. For example, perhaps all your media files (mp3, wav, etc) had once played in Windows Media Player by default. You get a shiny new iPod and download iTunes. iTunes suddenly takes over all your music file associations! So now, when you want to play your neat little wav sound effect, the bulky and bloated iTunes boots up to play the file. How do you get it back?

Microsoft instructs us to use their “Default Programs” manager in the Control Panel (Control Panel > Programs > Default Programs > Set Associations) to change the associations. But this is not always very intuitive and simple, especially if you want to simply and quickly change an association in the fly.

Here’s a very quick and easy way to change the file associations.

Go to the file. In my case, the file is a wav file. It’s a tiny audio sound effect file. I want to use a small, unobtrusive media player to play these types of files every time (by default). Currently, iTunes is set to open. I want to use QuickTime.

1. Right-click on the file. Click “Open with…” in the menu.

As you can see, there are quite a few choices in the menu already. You want to click on “Choose a default program” to set the association. If you chose “QuickTime” from the menu right there, the file would play in QuickTime for this instance only, and revert back to iTunes for all the other wav files.

2. Click “Choose a default program.”

3. When the new window opens, you will see a lot of choices. If you have not played the file in QuickTime, QuickTime will not appear in the list. You will have to click the small arrow in the right of the window.

4. Look for QuickTime (or whatever your own choice is) in the drop down menu. If it is there, click it. Click the small check box that reads “Always use the selected program to open this kind of file.” Click “OK.” All done!

5. If your desired application is not there, you will have to locate the application. This is a little trickier, because you have to direct the program to the application file, and different application files are in different places on the computer. Click on the “Browse” button in the “Open with” window.

6. By default, the window loads the Program Files folder. I saw no application file for QuickTime in this folder! To search another folder, I click the “OS (C:)” button in the address bar.

This shows me all the folders in my Operating System (C: drive). Because my computer is a 64-bit machine, program files are organized according to their ability to work with 64-bit or 32-bit capability. I won’t get into the 32/64-bit stuff right now, you can read about it on How to Tell if Your Computer is a 32-Bit or 64-Bit.

So I will click the folder “Program Files (x86).” QuickTime is in here. Double-click the folder to open it.

7. Look for the application file. The file should be labeled as an application and it should have the traditional logo of the program.

8. Double-click the application icon. The window will disappear and you will see the “Open with” window again. Click the small check box that reads “Always use the selected program to open this kind of file.” Click “OK.” All done!

From now on, this type of media file will always play in QuickTime for me.

You can use this trick to select other file associations, too. I find it easier than going to the Control Panel and hunting around in there. However, if you are making lots of big changes, you may find it easier to use the Control Panel method to save time.

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