Installing Picture Manager changes nothing about double-clicks - Windows 11 keeps opening the Photos app until you reassign each image format by hand. This page does that job two ways, the quick Open With route and the full Settings list, and marks the formats this 2010 tool honestly cannot take over.
This is the complaint that arrives right after every successful install: "it is installed, but my photos still open in the other app." Nothing is broken. Windows 11 guards file defaults closely, and a program from 2010 cannot claim them by itself. You claim them manually, format by format - a small job done once. Here is exactly where those settings live and the browse-to-the-program trick that works even when Picture Manager does not appear in the lists.
Windows 11 sets defaults per file type, not per program. Expect to repeat the same small job for JPG, PNG and any other formats you actually open.
Installing Picture Manager does not make it the default for anything. Windows 11 decides which app opens a file purely by file type, and its own Photos app holds those assignments out of the box. There is no single switch that hands every image type to one old program - Microsoft removed that one-click behaviour years ago, partly to stop programs hijacking defaults. So the job is real but small: point each format you actually use - usually just .jpg, .jpeg and .png - at Picture Manager once, and double-clicks behave the way you remember.
Use any photo on your PC as the lever:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\OIS.exe (drop the (x86) if you used the 64-bit installer). Select it and tick the Always box.Repeat for PNG and any other format you open often. Each format is its own one-time, thirty-second job.
For a tidy overview, use Settings instead:
.jpg and click the current app shown beside it.OIS.exe as above if it does not appear..jpeg, .png, .bmp, .gif and .tif are the usual ones.An honest note: Picture Manager sometimes does not register itself in these lists at all because it predates the modern default-apps system. The browse-to-OIS.exe step is the reliable workaround, and it is fully supported by Windows.
Set expectations correctly. Picture Manager handles the classic still-image formats well, but some things stay with modern apps no matter what you assign: HEIC photos from iPhones (Picture Manager cannot read the format), most RAW camera files, and animated or web formats like .webp are outside its world. Leave those file types pointing at the Photos app or your camera software. A mixed setup - Picture Manager for JPG and PNG, Photos for the modern formats - is the normal, healthy end state, not a failure.
Big feature updates occasionally restore Microsoft own apps as defaults. If double-clicks suddenly open Photos again after an update, nothing you installed was removed - just repeat the two-minute Open With job for the affected formats. There is no supported way to freeze defaults permanently, and tools that promise to lock them tend to cause more trouble than the reset itself. Treat it as occasional housekeeping, the same as the other small prices of running a retired tool on a current system.
Watch Picture Manager running on Windows 11 in the video, then set your defaults to match the workflow you saw.
▶️ Watch Full VideoIt predates the modern Windows default-apps registration system, so it often does not list itself. Use Choose another app, then Look for another app on this PC, and browse to OIS.exe in the Office14 folder. Windows remembers the assignment afterwards.
Only the ones you actually open. For most people that is .jpg, .jpeg and .png - three quick assignments. Leave rare or modern formats such as .heic and .webp with the Photos app, because Picture Manager cannot open them anyway.
No. Large Windows feature updates sometimes restore Microsoft apps as defaults. Picture Manager is still installed; just repeat the Open With step and tick Always use this app again for the formats you use.