Tjyylli

I need to be able to open about 16 JPGs in Chrome all at once, without
having to select each one and do Open With.

You have the Google Chrome shortcut icon, you then have all JPG filez selected in another window beside that, you then drag all those over to the Google Chrome shortcut icon, and all those JPG files will open with Chrome.

This gives you just what you ask, select all applicable JPG files, and then open those up with Chrome without needing to select the open with option.

you can do this using a workaround by using "Send to" on the right click context menu in Windows File Explorer. Here's how

Step 1 - Add Chrome shortcut to SendTo folder so that chrome may appear in the send to menu.

SendTo folder:%AppData%MicrosoftWindowsSendTo

This can be done in one of several ways. I will mention one of the easiest below.

• Right-drag the Google Chrome shortcut that was created on the Desktop when Chrome installed, or the Chrome shortcut in the Start menu, to the SendTo folder and select Copy.

Note: Right-click this shortcut, select Properties, and confirm that the Target field contains no command line options, just the path + file name for Chrome.

Step 2: Select the 16 JPGs, right click, go to "Send to" & select "Google Chrome".

That's it. All JPGs will open in Chrome, each in its own tab.

I use this with Firefox, but it should work with Chrome too.

Troubleshoot #1

If Google Chrome doesn't appear in the "Send to" menu, try restarting Windows File Explorer from Task Manager.

Troubleshoot #2

If the JPGs open in multiple windows, you might want to consider installing an extension in Chrome to prevent this behaviour. I suggest One Window.

I'm not going to suggest a solution in my answer since the best you can do without 3rd-party tools is probably PIMP_JUICE_IT's answer (although that answer is simply adding a new supplemental verb and it has nothing to do with the Windows "Open With" functionality and should be named accordingly).

I will however try to explain the technical details about what is going on and why:

The "Open With" submenu is implemented as a IContextMenu shell extension and is registered under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT*shellexContextMenuHandlers. When you right-click on one or more items in a shell folder the shell looks at various keys under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT to build the menu. Entries under ...shellexContextMenuHandlers are dynamic and execute actual computer code that determines how many menu items to add (if any).

It seems like Microsoft coded the "Open With" extension to only add the submenu when you select a single file, with one exception; multiple shortcuts (.lnk) can be selected and you will still get the submenu (at least on my Windows 8 machine). I'll go out on a limb and say that the shortcut handling is a bug.

There is no technical reason why the menu could not work for multiple files and in fact it used to work just fine on Windows XP:

I'm guessing the main reason they removed it is; what do you do when the user selects files of different types? However, there is already a precedent for this; you can select files of different types and press enter to open all of them. When you do this the shell just uses the action associated with item that has the focus rectangle.

It would be possible for a 3rd-party software vendor to create a similar menu that works for multiple files. The only restriction is that the "Choose another app"/"Choose default program" item at the bottom of the menu would probably have to be disabled when there are multiple files because the official way to invoke that dialog only supports a single file path. To fill the menu it would simply use SHAssocEnumHandlers to build a list of applications that are available for the specified file type.

This is such a edge case that nobody has spent to time to re-implement the "Open With" extension just to support multiple files even though it would be technically possible to do so...

This will open all jpg files in the folder in Chrome in separate tabs

1) Copy all the JPG files you want to open to a folder.

2) Open notepad. Paste the code below inside. Click save. Go to the folder mentioned above. Give the name as "open.bat" and select "All Files" below. Save.

3) Go to the folder and open "open.bat"!

Code:

set PATH=%PATH%;C:Program Files (x86)GoogleChromeApplication

SET names=

for /r %%i in (*.jpg) do call SET names= %%names%% "%%i"

echo %names%

start chrome.exe %names%

I've assumed the default installation directory of chrome. You may need to change it if you have done a custom installation.

My work pretty much requires that my images open by double-clicking
with Windows Photo Viewer (because Windows 10's Photos app is crap). –
Clonkex

Since you have the constraint on the default JPG viewer not being able to be changed, then you can change the default editor to be Google Chrome instead.

Once this is complete via the registry change described below, when you have all applicable JPG files selected, right-click, and then select the Edit option. All the files will open with Google Chrome.

The Registry Change

It seems the Registry Editor export of this option dumps in HEX value so I'll put the steps to change from the Registry Editor GUI.

The Key Path

• HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTSystemFileAssociationsimageshelleditcommand

Change the value to the full path of the Chrome.exe application on your system followed by "%1" just as shown in the below screen shot:

"C:Program Files (x86)GoogleChromeApplicationchrome.exe" "%1".

When I've encountered this, I've done the following:

1. "Open" Chrome


2. Drag-&-drop each JPG onto a tab. You need to do this per tab (see below). Shortcut to add tabs is Ctrl + T so you won't worry using the mouse much.

Note: When you select multiple JPG then drag-& drop, only the first or the last one selected will be shown.

Is there a way to actually do Open With on multiple files?

You could just select Open and all would do what you ask as well. . .

From the Control Panel, go to Default Programs, select Associate a file type or protocol with a program, and then change the default for both .jpg and .jpeg to Google Chrome.

Now when you select all applicable JPG files and select Open, all the selected JPG files will open with Google Chrome. This method uses the multiple-selected JPG file right-click Open option rather than Open With option so that may suffice for the need as you describe.

If you prefer not to mess around with the registry,

You can use FileMenu Tools.
It allows you to add custom commands to your context menu.

However, the custom command feature is not free. A license costs ~10 dollars.
There is a 30-day trial.