Make Cortana use Chrome by default instead of Edge

It is more than likely that many of us by now are used to using voice assistants on a daily basis. We generally use them from our mobile terminals, whether they are based on Android from Google, or ios from Apple. We ask them for directions, terms, or all kinds of questions that we need to solve at that time.

Well, to these we can add the proposals of two other technology giants such as Amazon that we see in many devices, or Microsoft. As you can imagine, in these lines we will focus on the latter, known as Cortana. In fact this is a project in which Microsoft It has been working for a long time so that it grows little by little. Yet its acceptance among the hundreds of millions of Windows 10, it is not expected at first

One of the reasons for them, for example, could be that the wizard works to give us most of the answers, with the browser of the same firm, Edge. But this is something that we are going to teach you to change.

Activate Cortana in Windows 10

In this way, what we achieve is that the windows voice assistant work together with the most used Internet browser in the world such as Chrome. It is possible that in this way, because most of you opt for this software, if Cortana also uses it, you will finally decide to use this function more assiduously.

For all this that we tell you, the first thing we will do is activate the assistant as such, since many of you possibly have it turned off in Windows 10. One of the possibilities for this, if we do not see the button Cortana in the taskbar, it is first by right-clicking on it. There we will see an option that says Show Cortana button, where we click.

At that moment, next to the system search box, the button corresponding to Cortana will appear, where we click to activate the assistant as such. For this we only have to enter the corresponding access credentials of our Microsoft account, the one we use in Windows.

From that moment on, we will have the possibility of using and interacting with the assistant, either through voice, or from the keyboard.

Download and use EdgeDeflector

Well, in the event that, as we mentioned before, you want to use Chrome in this section, when making inquiries to this assistant, we will help you. Keep in mind that although Windows allows us to choose any other default browser, Cortana always opens the links through Microsoft Edge. To avoid this, we will not be obliged to use a third-party program that will help us to alleviate this problem. This is open source software called EdgeDeflector that we can download from this link.

Here, on its GitHub page, we find the executable

that we download to the computer and that allows us to install the program on Windows. The process is carried out as with any other application. It is a light program and to give us an idea, it will be responsible for forcing Windows to use Google Chrome as the default browser in Cortana. Of course, here we can also opt for any other alternative of this type.

Configure EdgeDeflector to use Cortana with Chrome

Once we have installed the program, we have to go to the Windows configuration application to start it. This, for example, we achieve through the key combination Win + I. Next we go to the Applications section, looking for the Default Applications option in the left panel of the new window. If we scroll down, at the end we find a link that reads Choose default applications by protocol, where we click.

Here the full load of the list may take a few seconds, we will have to be patient. When the load is complete, we have to look for the entry corresponding to Microsoft Edge, where we click so that the Available options, and we will already have the possibility of associating EdgeDeflector with it.

Well, in the beginning we have everything done to achieve the end that we have talked about before. This is none other than making Cortana by default open the links of our queries directly with Chrome instead of with Edge.

Open links in Cortana with Chrome

Of course, first of all we have to make sure that this is precisely the browser that we have in the operating system, as the default program. We do this again from the aforementioned Settings application. Here we go to Applications / Default applications / Web browser, where we select Chrome. We already told you before that here we can choose any other of our choice for Cortana to use by default.

From that moment on, we can use Cortana again in a usual way, but with a slight change that we will notice immediately. When we click on the wizard button or do a search in the Windows box, the window will appear on the screen. Then we can do the query we want and all the results we choose will be automatically opened with Chrome.

Of course, this is a change that we can undo at any time by removing EdgeDeflector from the system. At the same time we have the possibility to change the application by protocol, back to Edge, as we saw previously. Anyway, for the usual browser’s Google, to say that this external application is very light and does not affect the performance of the PC at all.