If you happen to’ve taken benefit of Google Chrome’s nifty device that makes it the default browser for Home windows — with out even needing to open your PCs app settings! — we remorse to tell you that Microsoft’s most up-to-date replace introduces an annoying bug that appears to solely go away should you change your default again to Microsoft Edge. 

Bizarre, huh?

The April Home windows replace in query, KB5025221 (opens in new tab), has been inflicting no small quantity of hassle for enterprise customers, in accordance with Gizmodo (opens in new tab). 

Since July 2022, Google Chrome got here with a operate that might allow you to change your default browser with the clicking of a button, usually alongside the highest finish of the window, but in addition within the browser’s settings menu as nicely. 

Because the April 2023 Home windows replace nevertheless, Home windows enterprise prospects have been having an particularly robust time of issues because the Home windows Default App settings web page reportedly opens up each time Chrome is opened, forcing the person to shut the settings web page.

“After at the moment’s cumulative replace for Home windows 10 and 11, 2023-04, each time I open Chrome the default app settings of home windows will open,” one pissed off person on the Microsoft assist boards wrote (opens in new tab). “I’ve tried some ways to resolve this with out luck. That is taking place to all 600 programs with the replace.”

One other person of the r/sysadmin subreddit discovered that simply clicking on a hyperlink shortcut was sufficient to set off the difficulty.

“If Chrome is about because the default browser clicking on the hyperlink shortcut wil[l] open the hyperlink in chrome, but in addition open the home windows settings on the default apps,” the person, azaaza0909, writes (opens in new tab). Tellingly, in addition they be aware: “It would not occur if we modify the default browser to edge.”

The Home windows replace would not give a lot in the best way of concrete particulars as to what it’s fixing past saying up high that “This replace addresses safety points in your Home windows working system.”

It is not simply enterprise customers

Whereas enterprise customers appear to be essentially the most severely impacted by this bug, they are not the one ones. Shopper variations of Home windows 10 and Home windows 11 additionally appear to have been impacted by the April replace, although its impression is extra annoying than actively irritating.

For normal prospects, the replace appears to have disabled Google Chrome’s potential to set the default browser via the browser itself. I can affirm that going into Chrome’s settings and attempting to set the default browser will drive the Default App settings to open, however not really change something. You’d must navigate down the app checklist, choose Chrome, and on the high click on the button that claims Set Default.

After setting Google Chrome because the default browser, I attempted to do the identical factor via the Settings menu on Microsoft Edge. With Microsoft Edge although, clicking the Set Default button within the Default Browser menu did in reality reset the default browser to Edge.

So, is that this a matter of Microsoft dinging its net browser rival? There is not any solution to assign that sort of motivation to an organization of many hundreds of individuals, however I am inclined to consider that the difficulty with Default Browser-Gate is not purely malice on Microsoft’s half.

What’s behind the bug? 

With the intention to set the default app on Home windows the person simply toggles a few switches and goes about their searching journey, however behind the scenes, the report of which app is the default app (opens in new tab) for opening recordsdata with particular extensions (like .html) is recorded within the OS’s registry file system. 

This isn’t the sort of factor you fiddle with willy-nilly, since screwing up your registry settings may cause all types of havoc and even brick your Home windows set up. Google, in the meantime, must make edits to your OS registry recordsdata with a purpose to set Chrome because the default net searching app, and although applications do that on a regular basis when putting in or uninstalling parts, it is often not as simple as a single button click on exterior of a Home windows settings menu.

And whereas Google may need gotten away with its device for a number of months, that is the sort of vector for safety threats that may be a magnet for software program safety professionals. 

Altering your default net browser from contained in the browser itself is not prone to pose any sort of risk, however good data and software program safety is preventative moderately than reactive. So, Microsoft possible simply decided that it wanted to maintain these sorts of registry changeable actions contained inside Microsoft’s personal settings system, which is much extra prone to be safe than some future model of Google Chrome.

That is most likely what Microsoft is referring to when it writes in one of many few notes on the replace that “This replace addresses a compatibility problem. The problem happens due to unsupported use of the registry.”

As for why Edge could make the registry modifications denied to Google? Nicely, Edge is Microsoft’s product, so it’s clearly going to be way more suitable and understood by the Home windows OS builders themselves who can work collectively internally to create a protected method for its browser to do issues usually requiring greater degree privileges when tried by a third-party app. This totally makes it simpler to make sure safety is being maintained since Microsoft is in command of each of the actors within the trade.

May Microsoft even be performing petty and making it only a teensy bit more durable to make use of its competitor’s product whereas making its personal a lot simpler instead? Who’s to say; it isn’t like Microsoft acquired into a really well-known anti-trust battle with the US authorities (and misplaced!) over this actual problem of the corporate giving system-level choice to its personal net browser over a competitor’s, proper? 

Given the growing depth of Microsoft’s push to extend Edge adoption (together with its more and more grating makes an attempt to get you to change to its browser (opens in new tab)), at a minimal, the perfect you possibly can say is that Microsoft would not exit of its solution to essentially make it simpler for Google to win the newest browser struggle. In the long run, it is possible a bit of column A, a bit of column B, however this one is at the very least extra defensible from a safety perspective.