I created an installer that creates a link for my webapp. Since the webapp must be opened in Edge, the link starts with microsoft-edge:MyAppURL and this works.

On some systems with Windows 10, when opening the link a question is asked. A popup with the following question:

How do you want to open this?

There are two possible answers, both present Edge browser, the first one is with the nice Edge icon (and a text "Featured with Windows 10"), the second option is also Edge, but without icon.

Regardless what the user clicks, both options work, and Edge is opened.

User can also check "Always use this app" and the popup will not appear in the future.

Because of some complaints, I want to ensure the popup will never appear in the future, links with microsoft-edge: protocol will start without any questions.

To avoid that popup, I created the following registry file by exporting the value from registry of a computer without the mentioned popup problem:

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\microsoft-edge]
@="URL:microsoft-edge"
"URL Protocol"=""

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\microsoft-edge\shell]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\microsoft-edge\shell\open]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\microsoft-edge\shell\open\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft\\Edge\\Application\\msedge.exe\" \"%1\""

But even importing that registry item, nothing changes, and when clicking the link, first time user will see the popup with the question.

Any idea what else to change?

EDIT

The question could be more simple: what does change in the registry, when user checks the "Always use this app" option? - Of course, not related to a file extension, but regarding to a protocol (and in particular, the microsoft-edge: protocol)

I created an installer that creates a link for my webapp. Since the webapp must be opened in Edge, the link starts with microsoft-edge:MyAppURL and this works.

On some systems with Windows 10, when opening the link a question is asked. A popup with the following question:

How do you want to open this?

There are two possible answers, both present Edge browser, the first one is with the nice Edge icon (and a text "Featured with Windows 10"), the second option is also Edge, but without icon.

Regardless what the user clicks, both options work, and Edge is opened.

User can also check "Always use this app" and the popup will not appear in the future.

Because of some complaints, I want to ensure the popup will never appear in the future, links with microsoft-edge: protocol will start without any questions.

To avoid that popup, I created the following registry file by exporting the value from registry of a computer without the mentioned popup problem:

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\microsoft-edge]
@="URL:microsoft-edge"
"URL Protocol"=""

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\microsoft-edge\shell]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\microsoft-edge\shell\open]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\microsoft-edge\shell\open\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft\\Edge\\Application\\msedge.exe\" \"%1\""

But even importing that registry item, nothing changes, and when clicking the link, first time user will see the popup with the question.

Any idea what else to change?

EDIT

The question could be more simple: what does change in the registry, when user checks the "Always use this app" option? - Of course, not related to a file extension, but regarding to a protocol (and in particular, the microsoft-edge: protocol)

• registry
• microsoft-edge

1 Answer 1

When you check "Always use this app", it is simply changing the default app for this file type/protocol, which should not cause this issue, since the default app for microsoft-edge protocol is always Microsoft Edge.

In my opinion, for users that never have launched Microsoft Edge before, there's something called 'new application installed' notification that would show this exact prompt when you force to access the link in Microsoft Edge.

There is a group policy to hide these notifications: Do not show the 'new application installed' notification. This policy removes the end-user notification for new application associations. These associations are based on file types (e.g. *.html) or protocols (e.g. microsoft-edge:). If this group policy is enabled, no notifications will be shown. The value in reg file should be:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer]
"NoNewAppAlert"=dword:00000001

You may also look into ways to change the default app in registry if the solution above failed, but this solution (to change the default app in registry) is sometimes denied due to lack of permission so it is rather complicated. If you can reproduce this issue on your end, you may consider changing the default app settings first in Windows settings to see if it does have something to do with default app settings.