In general, the Windows 10 and 11 operating systems have persistent messaging that Microsoft Edge is the “recommended” browser for Windows, and offer affordances to change the default browser to Edge. In some cases the wording is misleading, asking a user to adopt “recommended browser settings”, which does not obviously suggest a default browser change. This messaging is a moving target, with examples added and removed from Windows over time, often on UI surfaces that appear automatically on update or otherwise, making it difficult to enumerate specific examples.

In all cases these Windows components are able to change the user’s default browser directly, and are not forced to use the ms-settings: protocol deep linking that browsers are required to use (see issue #10). Windows should consume the same affordances and APIs that are available to third-party browsers for setting-to-default.