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Windows 11 has been in the news for many reasons this year, not all of those have been positive. The recent Windows Update that was released last week brings yet another unwelcome change, it effectively removes Mozilla's workaround to set Firefox as the default web browser.

But we should have seen this coming. It all began when Windows 11 made it more difficult to change the default apps, it requires a few more clicks. The unaware user won't know where to look for the setting, and will have to rely on Edge, not by choice, but because they had no idea how to change the browser.

In September, Mozilla found a fix by reverse engineering the default apps protocol, thus allowing users to set Firefox as the default browser. So far so good, right. The workaround didn't go unnoticed, and a Microsoft spokesperson released a statement to The Verge, which said that a fix would be issued in a future Windows Update, to correct this improper redirection.

Soon after this, the developer of the open source program, EdgeDeflector, discovered a new problem. The Windows 11 build released at that time, Build 22494, changed the way how file associations are handled. His software could no longer intercept the microsoft-edge:// links, meaning the program could not be used to redirect the URLs from the Start Menu's search results, to open in the default browser.

This was the "fix" from Microsoft. Mozilla wasn't pleased about this, and cried foul, again!. It wasn't alone in this regard. Microsoft's antics attracted the ire of many, and Vivaldi's founder slammed Microsoft Edge's practices as anticompetitive. Browser wars have never been pretty, but Microsoft is just being petty.
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