Get back old Windows Photo Viewer in Windows 11!

Windows 11 has come with a lot of features. In many of our previous articles, we discussed about a lot of such features and reviewed if they are good or not. Among those features, one was the latest Photos app. It replaced the old Windows Photo Viewer for all type of Image files.

But, many of us don’t like the new Photos app and all are trying to bring back their old Windows Photo Viewer. For directly upgraded systems, it is possible to get back the app. But, for freshly installed systems, Windows does not allow to use the Windows Photo Viewer for image files.

In this tutorial, I will show you how to get back the old Windows Photo Viewer back and set that as the default picture viewer for all types of images like .jpg, .gif, .png etc.

• First of all check if you have the Windows Photo Viewer working on your system by just Right Clicking an image and choosing Open with… option. If the Photo viewer is there and works, then no need to follow this tutorial. If not, continue reading…
• All you need to is some steps to unlock the old  Windows Photo Viewer from the OS as that one is hidden and locked somewhere in the system. That means you don’t need any installation or app download etc. 🙂
• Follow these steps when you are ready…
• First, download the Registry file for the trick from the following link:

photoviewer.reg (3kB)

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• Now, open the file and click Yes for all prompts when asked

• That’s it you’ve successfully completed the tutorial. Now, you can view your image files using the old Windows Photo Viewer

If you don’t know how to associate files, then just follow the next steps:

• Right Click any image file that you want to open
• Go through Open with… option
• Check the list if there is Windows Photo Viewer, if there then just click on it
• If not, then click Look for another app in this PC

• In the open dialog box, Navigate to:

C:\Program Files\Windows Photo Viewer\

• Now, open the PhotoViewer.dll file (make sure the file type is selected as All files)

Since this is a Registry trick, do it at your own risk, and if there are any errors occured, please feel free to comment and we\’ll check it out 🙂