Open Default Apps (or Any Other Settings) in Windows 10
Sometimes you need to open windows settings programmatically. In my case mostly due to security restrictions - you can’t just go around the OS and change the settings, you need to ask the user to do that.
Luckily Windows 10 makes it easy by supporting the ms-settings:
URI scheme, and there are plethora of system dialogs you can open with it.
In my case, I needed to open “default apps” window (ms-settings:defaultapps
) and this is how i did it:
Header:
void open_mssettings(const std::wstring name);
void open_default_apps();
Implementation:
void open_mssettings(const std::wstring name)
{
wstring url(L"ms-settings:");
url += name;
HINSTANCE hi = ::ShellExecute(
nullptr,
L"open",
url.c_str(),
nullptr,
nullptr,
SW_SHOWDEFAULT);
}
void open_default_apps()
{
open_mssettings(L"defaultapps");
}
Effect:
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