I love Apple’s iTunes. I have a ton of content and have bought lots of albums, movies and even TV episodes. So how do I set up iTunes as the default music player on my Windows 10 computer?
If you think listening to music on your Windows system is still all about WMP (Windows Media Player) you haven’t checked your music setup in rather a while! Turns out that a few years ago Microsoft pushed everyone into using “Xbox Music Player” but then rebranded that as “Groove Music”. Interestingly, to obtain the rights to the name, the company reputedly bought a program called “Groove Smart Music Player”, though where the actual software went is a bit of a puzzle. In any case, Groove Music is the default music player in Windows 10 and Win10.1 now and it’s pretty nice.
Still, as with all music and media players, you’re kind of locked into an ecosystem, so if you’ve already invested in the Apple Music world (e.g., iTunes) I completely understand you wanting to use iTunes for Windows on, well, your Windows computer. Once downloaded, there’s really nothing special you have to do, though; just launch iTunes when you want to use it. To have it be the default music player for .Mp3 and .WMA files and similar, you will need to change the default, however, so let’s see how that’s done.
To start, you can easily grab the latest version of Apple iTunes from apple.com/itunes/download/ It looks like this:
Click on the “Get it From Microsoft” button, however and, surprise! you’ll find yourself in Microsoft Windows after all. Yeah, we could have started there but where’s the fun in that? 🙂
So, finally, click on “Get” and you can get a copy of iTunes for Windows yourself.
Now, once that’s downloaded and installed, use Cortana to search for “default music player“. Here are the options that should show up:
The first choice is what you want: “Choose a default music player“. Sure there are other ways to get to this particular setting, but Cortana makes it super easy to go right the correct window in the complex world of Settings and Preferences. In fact, click or tap on it and you’ll go straight here:
As you can see, this is where you can also change the default email program, default map program, and so on. To change your default music player from this point is simplicity itself: Click on “Groove Music” and a window will all the possible options will pop up:
Heck, you could go back to WMP if you really want to, though I’m not sure why you’d make that decision. Or, as hoped, you can choose “iTunes”. Click to choose it and Windows will beg you not to switch:
If you’re sure you want to switch to iTunes, however, just click “Switch anyway” and it’s a done deal.
That’s it. Done. Now you can log in to your iTunes account and get everything set up just how you like.
Pro Tip: While we’re talking about Windows, please do check out all my Windows help on the site too. Thanks!
Thanks for the help. I changed the the music player to be default itunes but it still shows as groove. how do i change that. Please advice.
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