Windows Photo Viewer

I've been accused of being a Luddite and maybe I am.

But maybe I just like simple applications that just work.

Windows 7 and 8 had a really nice application, Windows Photo Viewer. It had useful and intuitive keyboard and cursor commands.

Windows 10 displaced (not REplaced) Windows Photo Viewer with Photos. To me, it's not as intuitive as Windows Photo Viewer.

The good news is that Windows Photo Viewer is still there. And if you got to Windows 10 by an upgrade in place from Windows 7 or 8, getting Windows Photo Viewer back is easy.

CNET has a good article on how to do this but it's easy.

[S]imply open up Settings and go to System > Default apps. Under "Photo viewer," you should see your current default photo viewer (probably the new Photos app). Click this to see a list of options for a new default photo viewer. Assuming you upgraded to Windows 10 from a previous version of Windows, you should see Windows Photo Viewer as an option.

Choose Windows Photo Viewer and exit the Settings menu, and you're done -- photos will now open up in Windows Photo Viewer.

If you got to Windows 10 with a clean install, it's a little trickier.

But this article in TenForums will walk you through it.

The tl;dr of this is to download this .reg file. Run it. Follow the procedure above to reset the default app.