update default download location How to Change the Default Installation Location on Windows 10? [MiniTool News] Your Windows 10 computer has a default installation location. As long as you don’t manually change the installation folder during the installation process, that new program will be installed to that default installation location. If you don’t want new programs to take up disk space on C drive, you can change the default installation location on Windows 10. In this post, MiniTool Software will show you two methods. When you install a new program on your computer, it will be installed to a default installation location. This folder is usually in drive C. If you are using a 32-bit Windows 10, that default installation location should be C:\Program Files(x86) . If it is a 64-bit Windows 10, that folder should be C:\Program Files . As time goes by, more and more programs will be installed on drive C your C drive may run out of space. If you encounter this issue, you can take some measures to free up disk space. On the other hand, you can change the default installation location on Windows 10 to avoid this situation. In this article, we will show you two methods to change the install drive on Windows 10. You can just select the method you want to use to solve your issue. Where does Store install games? Where are Steam games stored? In this post, we will mainly talk about the Windows 10 game location issue. How to Change Default Installation Location on Windows 10? Use Registry Editor to Change Default Install Drive on Windows 10 Use to Change Default Install Drive on Windows 10. Use Registry Editor to Change Default Install Location on Windows 10. You are allowed to change the default installation location on your Windows 10 computer via Registry Editor. Here is a guide: 1. Use to search for regedit and select Registry Editor from the search results to open it. 2. Go to the following path: 3. Click the CurrentVersion folder to open it. You will see some options on the right panel. 4. If you are using 64-bit Windows 10, you can see both ProgramFilesDir and ProgramFilesDir(x86) on the list. Double click on any of them to open the Edit String By default, the content in Value data is C:\Program Files . You can change it to any location you want to save the installed programs. 5. Click OK to save the change. 6. Close Registry Editor. 7. Reboot your computer. Use Settings to Change Default Install Location on Windows 10. You can also change the default installation drive via Settings. This is a very simple method: 1. Click Start . 2. Go to Settings > System > Storage . 3. Click the Change where new content is saved link. 4. Expand the list for New apps will save to and then select the location you want to use to save the newly installed apps. 5. Click Apply to save the change. Those are the two methods to change the default installation location on your Windows 10 computer. You can just select your preferred way to do the job. If You Want to Recover Your Lost Data. Sometimes, you may delete your important data from the installation location. You can use free data recovery software to get your data back. MiniTool Power Data Recovery is worth trying. This software is specially designed to recover data from external hard drives, internal hard drives, memory cards, SD cards, and more. You can use the trial edition to scan the target drive and see whether it can find the files you want to recover. If you are sure this software works to scan for your needed files, you can use a full edition to recover them without limits. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Reddit. ABOUT THE AUTHOR. Position: Columnist. Stella has been working in MiniTool Software as an English Editor for more than 4 years. Her articles mainly cover the fields of data recovery including storage media data recovery and phone data recovery, YouTube videos download, partition management, and video conversions. How to set Default Location of your PC in Windows 10. Several apps and services in Windows 10 require access to your location in order to impart location-based services . However, sometimes things can go wrong, and location discovery may break causing the apps and services to fail in fetching your current location. Keeping in mind such circumstances, you can set the default location which can be used when apps and services are not able to pinpoint your current location correctly. It can turn out to be pretty useful when both your current and default location are set to your home address . You can peacefully stop worrying about the slow internet speed and location discovery because your default location will be picked up if the current one is inaccessible. Quite useful, isn’t it? Let’s see the steps to set and change your default location in Windows 10. Set Default Location in Windows 10. 1. Open Settings app using key combination + I . Select Privacy from the available options. 2. In the left pane of Privacy Settings window, move to the Location tab. 3. Now on the right side pane, scroll down to the section named Default location . Click on Set default button to open Windows Maps app for setting a location as default. 4. Up next in Maps app, click on Set default location button. 5. A text box should come in sight with a drop-down menu consisting of your saved and recent places. You can enter a location manually, or you can select anyone from the drop-down menu. You can also click any location on the map to set it as default. 6. That is it. You have saved your default location which will be automatically selected in case an exact location is not discovered by apps. Change Default Location. 7. To change your default location in the future, you can also access Maps app settings . To do so, click on the horizontal ellipsis menu button on the top-right edge of the Maps app and select Settings from the menu. Now, on the Settings slate, click on Change default location button under the section named Default location. Your default location should now be picked up whenever location discovery services fail to pinpoint your exact location. How to set Default Location of your PC in Windows 10. Several apps and services in Windows 10 require access to your location in order to impart location-based services . However, sometimes things can go wrong, and location discovery may break causing the apps and services to fail in fetching your current location. Keeping in mind such circumstances, you can set the default location which can be used when apps and services are not able to pinpoint your current location correctly. It can turn out to be pretty useful when both your current and default location are set to your home address . You can peacefully stop worrying about the slow internet speed and location discovery because your default location will be picked up if the current one is inaccessible. Quite useful, isn’t it? Let’s see the steps to set and change your default location in Windows 10. Set Default Location in Windows 10. 1. Open Settings app using key combination Windows Key + I . Select Privacy from the available options. 2. In the left pane of Privacy Settings window, move to the Location tab. 3. Now on the right side pane, scroll down to the section named Default location . Click on Set default button to open Windows Maps app for setting a location as default. 4. Up next in Maps app, click on Set default location button. 5. A text box should come in sight with a drop-down menu consisting of your saved and recent places. You can enter a location manually, or you can select anyone from the drop-down menu. You can also click any location on the map to set it as default. 6. That is it. You have saved your default location which will be automatically selected in case an exact location is not discovered by apps. Change Default Location. 7. To change your default location in the future, you can also access Maps app settings . To do so, click on the horizontal ellipsis menu button on the top-right edge of the Maps app and select Settings from the menu. Now, on the Settings slate, click on Change default location button under the section named Default location. Your default location should now be picked up whenever location discovery services fail to pinpoint your exact location. How To Change Default Download Location In Windows 10. Your Windows 10 computer saves your downloaded files in a certain folder on your hard drive. If you want, you can change this default download location on your Windows 10 PC to any other folder you like. There are many reasons you may want to change the default downloads folder on your computer. Maybe you want to keep your downloaded files on a certain partition? Or maybe you’re starting a new download task and you want all those files saved in a certain folder? There are various ways to change the default download location in Windows 10. Change Default Download Location Using . One way to change the default download location is to use the File Explorer utility. Use search to search for This PC and open it. Navigate to the drive where you want to make a default downloads folder. Once you’re in your chosen drive, right-click any blank space and choose New followed by Folder . Enter a name for your new downloads folder. This is where your future downloaded files will be available. Head to the root folder in This PC so you can see the Downloads folder. Right-click the Downloads folder and select Properties . On the following screen, click the tab that says Location . In the Location tab, you’ll see the current path to your downloads folder. To change this folder, click the button that says Move . Your computer will let you select the new default downloads folder. Navigate to the drive where you created the new folder and select it. Click Apply followed by OK to use your newly selected folder as the default downloads location. If you ever want to revert back to the old downloads folder, click the Restore Default button and it’ll reset your settings. Change Default Download Location Using Registry Editor. Editor lets you tweak many settings on your machine. This includes changing the default downloads location on your Windows 10 PC. You only need to edit one value in the registry and your chosen folder will become the new default downloads location. Create a new folder that you want to use as the default downloads folder. This could be anywhere on your computer or even on your connected drives. Open your newly created folder with File Explorer . You need to copy the path to your new downloads folder. Click the address bar, highlight the full path, and press Ctrl + C on your keyboard to copy the path. Press the Windows + R keys at the same time to open the Run box. Type the following into the Run box and press Enter . This’ll open the Registry Editor. When the Registry Editor opens, navigate to the following path. On the right-hand side pane, you’ll see several registry values that you can tweak. Find the entry that has %USERPROFILE%\Downloads in its Data column and double-click it. Put your cursor in the Value data box, remove the existing content from the box, and press Ctrl + V to paste the path to your new downloads folder location. Then click OK to save changes. Reboot your computer. Change Default Download Location For Various File Types. There’s a feature in Windows 10 that lets you choose different drives for saving different types of files. With this feature, you can change where your computer saves your apps, documents, music, and so on. You don’t get to choose the specific folder, though. You can only choose the drive where your new content is to be saved. Open the , search for Settings , and open it. Select the option that says System on the following screen. Click Storage from the options available in the left sidebar. You’ll see your storage information on the right-hand side pane. Scroll down and click the option that says Change where new content is saved . On the following screen, you’ll see what content is saved where by default. To change the default downloads drive for a specific content type, click the dropdown menu next to the file type and choose your preferred drive. You can change the default downloads location for the following items with this feature. Apps Documents Music Photos Videos Movies TV shows Offline maps. Change Default Download Location In . You can change the default downloads location in Microsoft Edge on your computer so that your future downloads are saved in your selected folder. Changing this setting only applies to this browser. Your other browsers will continue to save your files where they did before. Open the Start Menu , search for Microsoft Edge , and launch it. Click the three-dots at the top-right corner of your browser and select the option that says Settings . You’ll see several options in the left sidebar on your screen. Find the option that says Downloads and click it. This option will let you modify your downloads settings. On the right-hand side pane, you’ll see an item that says Location . This is currently where Edge saves your files. To change the default downloads folder, click the Change button. File Explorer will open, letting you select your new folder as the default downloads folder. Click the folder and choose Select Folder . If you want Microsoft Edge to ask where to save the file each time it downloads something, enable the toggle for Ask where to save each file before downloading . If you use a download manager to download files, you need to head into the settings of your download manager app and change the default downloads location. Many apps don’t use the default Windows downloads folder as their downloads location. Did you ever have to change the default downloads location on your Windows 10 PC? What method did you use to do that? We’d like to know in the comments below. Mahesh has been obsessed with technology since he got his first gadget a decade or so ago. Over the last few years, he's written a number of tech articles on various online publications including but not limited to MakeTechEasier and Android AppStorm. Read Mahesh's Full Bio. How to Move the Downloads Folder in Windows 10. Windows 10 stores your Downloads folder in your user profile. In most cases, its path is something like C:\Users\SomeUser\Downloads. You can open it quickly by typing %userprofile%\Downloads in File Explorer's address bar. Let's see how to move this folder to another location. There are several ways to access your Downloads folder. For example, you can enter "%userprofile%\Downloads" in File Explorer's address bar as mentioned above. Or you can open This PC and find the Downloads folder there. In this article, I will use the path with the %userprofile% environment variable as a reference. You might want to change the default location of the Downloads folder in order to save space on the partition where your is installed (your C: drive). Here is how it can be done. . Tip: you can set File Explorer open to the Downloads folder directly! Type or copy-paste the following in the address bar: %userprofile% Press the enter key. Your user profile folder will be opened. See the Downloads folder. Right click the Downloads folder and select Properties. In Properties, go to the Location tab, and click on the Move button. In the folder browse dialog, select the new folder you want to store your Downloads. Click on the OK button to make the change. When prompted, click on Yes to move all your files from the old location to the new folder. This way, you can change the location of your Downloads folder to another folder, or to a folder on a different disk drive, or even to a mapped network drive. This will allow you to save space on the system drive, which can be particularly useful for users who keep large files in Downloads. If you reinstall Windows 10, your custom Downloads folder stored on a different drive won't disappear with all your data if you accidentally format your system partition. The next time you save a file to the Downloads folder, Windows will use the new location that you set. Here is the full set of articles on how to move your user folders: Winaero greatly relies on your support. You can help the site keep bringing you interesting and useful content and software by using these options: Share this post. About Sergey Tkachenko. Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer from Russia who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.