Navigate to an example of a file that your Mac is handling with the “wrong” app.You can change the default app that’s used for all files of a specific type, across an entire user account, using the following steps: Open the ‘Default email reader’ dropdown, and select your preferred email client.Įvery file has a default app associated with it: depending on how your Mac is setup, clicking a word processing document might launch Pages or TextEdit, and clicking an image might launch Preview or Photos.Make sure the ‘General’ tab is selected.Select ‘Mail > Preferences’ from the toolbar.If you want it to launch a different email client, then: Open the ‘Default web browser’ dropdown, and choose your preferred browser from the list.īy default, whenever you click on an email address macOS will respond by launching the Mail application.Navigate to ‘System Preferences > General.’.Out-of-the-box, macOS uses Safari as its default web browser, but you can tell your Mac to open links in any other browser you have installed: If you’re not happy with this change, then you’ll need to manually adjust your Mac’s default app settings. In this quick tip I’ll be showing you how to change the default application for any file, and how to change macOS’ default browser from Safari, to any other web browser of your choice.Įven if you’re currently happy with your Mac’s default apps, it’s still useful to know how to change these settings, as occasionally you may install a third party app only for that app to appoint itself as the new default app for a particular file type. While this can be useful for providing you with quick and easy access to content, if a file or link is associated with the “wrong” application, then this feature can quickly become frustrating, as you may find yourself constantly closing applications that you didn’t even want to open in the first place. You see the same behaviour with links: if you click a link to a website, then macOS will load this website in Safari, and if you click a link to an email address, then macOS will launch the Apple Mail app. Whenever you double-click a file, macOS responds by opening this file in its default app. Whether it’s an MP3, a PDF, a word processing document or something more obscure, every file has a default application associated with it.

Default programs on mac os x