Have you ever noticed how your computer knows which program to open when you double click on a file? It doesn’t always know but most of the time it does. When it doesn’t know, your computer will ask ...

File extensions are the characters that precede the last period of a file name. It helps us find the type of file we are trying to open i.e. whether it is an audio file, video file, or simply a ...

In most cases, the majority of the file extensions you encounter on your computer are already associated with a program or protocol. When a file extension is not associated with a program, however, ...

When you double-click on a file in Windows, it will automatically open a default program that is configured to manage these types of files. It is common, though, want or need to use a different ...

Small File Explorer changes that remove daily Windows friction.

Microsoft uses file associations to set default programs for opening different file types on all its operating systems. As a result, when you open a file, be it text, image, or document, on your ...

Jake Peterson is Lifehacker’s Senior Technology Editor. He has a BFA in Film & TV from NYU, where he specialized in writing. Jake has been helping people with their technology professionally since ...

The default setting for Windows is to not display a file's extension, which is the last period in a file name followed by 2 or 3 letters. Therefore, when viewing files in Windows you would only see ...

Red Eye Rose received a file with a strange extension. She doesn’t know into what program she should load it. Neither does Windows. I doubt that anyone knows all of the file extensions used since the ...