Unwanted file-type renaming

I have a question about unwanted file-type renaming — not of the suffix or extension, but of the type-name itself.

I have a useful little image-management program called IrfanView. I updated it recently for security purposes, and it instantly renamed the (file) type of all of my jpg files to display in Opus as "IrfanView JPG file." (It had been "JPG file" or some such variant.) In a similar way, big players like Microsoft insist on naming their file types "Microsoft Word Document," and so forth.

This advertising behavior makes everything harder to read, gunks up space pointlessly, etc.

Is there a way to edit file-type-display names in Opus, and convert/restore them to a short and simple form? An earlier version of Windows definitely used to allow this, but now I can't recover what it was, or it if ever exists.

Can Opus fix this problem?

You may be able to edit them via Settings > File Types. If not, the names come from the registry which you could edit directly as a fallback.

Of course, some software will re-write the names either when installing updates or every time it runs.

You'll need to find the default root class for the extension and alter the Default value for the key. For example:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\IrfanView.jpg

...holds the value "IrfanView JPG File". Simply edit the description in the registry and refresh DOpus. Note that if the default app changes, the description will change to whatever that app wants until you find the new key and edit it as desired.

There were some scripts that used to drift around for resetting a bunch of default handlers, but they reset the description AND the action, which I don't believe is what you want. (I'm assuming you still want to open images in IrfanView, you just don't want the stupid description.)

Bonus tip: install Command: GoRegistry (open reg-key by button or path-field) to be able to jump directly to a Registry key in the clipboard.

1 Like

Since the Registry Editor now has an address field (just below the menus), you can copy-and-paste a registry address and go directly to that location in the path without installing additional software.

2 Likes