Google Pushes Chrome as Default PDF Viewer on Windows 11

While the race for the default browser on users’ devices is still on, Google has recently started experimenting with showing an info bar at the top when a PDF is opened in Chrome on Windows to prompt users to set it as the default PDF Viewer.

Set Google Chrome as your default PDF Viewer Prompt

“Set Google Chrome as default PDF Viewer” with the “Set as default” option included in the info bar was spotted by us in Chrome dev.

According to a commit message, Google is running an experiment where, if it is active, the prompt will appear at startup when you open Chrome or when a PDF is loaded.

Users can close this info bar by clicking the option at the end.

In our testing, unfortunately, clicking “Set as default” didn’t work on Windows 11 24H2, where Edge is still preferred as the default when it comes to viewing PDFs on Windows 11.

So, showing only the prompt may not help—Google also needs to figure out how Chrome forces the necessary dialog on Windows to choose it as the default from the browser or other installed apps.

The commit message reveals this push is targeted for Chrome on Windows and macOS.

While Google has included a PDF Viewer in Chrome for basic needs, in recent times, the company has improved Chrome’s PDF Viewer with the ability to write or highlight text on PDFs using PDF Annotations and copy and search text in Scanned PDFs.

Chrome PDF Viewer also supports Two Page View, presentation mode, printing the document, and the ability to rotate PDFs in clockwise and anti-clockwise directions. If we are not wrong, Chrome’s PDF Viewer has also been getting upgraded with Material 3 Design Refresh.

Chrome allows users to use it as a PDF Viewer or a third-party PDF app on Windows for their PDF needs. By default, Chrome opens PDFs in it, but you can configure this behavior in settings.

That’s not All. Google is working to boost Chrome speed while you create new tabs with infinite Tabs Freezing feature.

Do you use Chrome’s PDF Viewer? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.