How To Set Default Apps on the iPhone

A new feature in iOS 18.2 allows you to change your default apps for email, web, phone calls and more in a new section in the Settings app.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to set default apps on your iPhone and iPad. 
So a new feature in iOS and iPad OS 18.2 is the ability to set default apps for certain things like web browsing and email. Now you could do this before but more options have been added and it has all been consolidated into a single section in the Settings App. 
To get there go into Settings and then you want to scroll down all the way to the bottom and you'll see Apps. So this is new in iOS 18, the idea that all of your apps are in this one heading here. You go into this you'll see all of your apps there even the apps that come with your iPhone like Mail and Safari. There's this handy alphabetized list here on the right and you can tap that to jump to a section since this list is probably very long. 
Now you don't actually need to go through this list to set default apps because what you want is right here at the top. It's a special section called Default Apps. Now you have all the different activities that you can set a default app for. For instance, the first item here is Email and if I tap that I see that my default mail app is the built-in Mail App. But if you have another mail app installed on your iPhone, as I do, you could set that to be the default mail app. So in this case gmail is the other app I've got and I could change it so that now when I click on a link or I use an action inside of an app that will start an email, instead of going to the Mail App it is going to go to the Gmail App. 
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Here's another example. Under Browser App the default you can see here is Safari, the built-in browser in iOS 18. But I could change it to any other browser I have installed. I just have one installed here, Chrome, and I can change it to that. So, for instance, here I am in one of my games. There's an About Feedback Section here. One of the buttons here will actually take you to my website so you can send feedback. If I tap that you can see that's going to open up here in Safari. Let's go back into Settings here and switch my default browser app to Chrome.  Now if I tap that same button here it's going to launch Goggle Chrome instead of Safari to go to the same webpage. 
Now let's look at the other activities here. So for messaging you can set a different app to handle messages. The only one I've got installed is the default Messages App. If you look under Calling, even if you don't have another calling app, you still have the option between your phone app or FaceTime. So you can always use FaceTime to make a phone call. Under Call Filtering you can select any app that you have installed that will filter calls. Usually these will add some sort of called ID so you can tell when you're getting a spam call or sometimes they allow you to block calls completely. You can actually turn on as many as you want here. 
Under Passwords & Codes if you go into that you could set which apps you use for storing passwords. Now note you don't have to choose just one. You can choose the built-in Passwords App, as I have, and also choose One Password. So every time it prompts you for a password you can select passwords from either one of these. Note that there is a separate option here for Set Up Codes In. This is for two-factor codes. If I go in here you can see things like Goggle Authenticator also in here. You can set which of your default apps to use when you set those up. Not necessarily when you use them but when you need to verify the first time you do it so that you can set up two-factor authentication. 
For most users you're probably just going to have the Passwords App turned on here and Passwords set in Set Up Codes. In fact that is what I've got. 
You also have a settings for Contact List App. By default it is set to Wallet. But if you've got something else you want to trigger when you tap your phone to a NFC Terminal you would see it listed here if you have an app for that and you would be able to switch to it. 
Finally, we've got Keyboards. You can still find all the settings for this in General and then Keyboards. But it is here as well. So I can go in and I can see I've got three keyboards here. The first two are installed by default and the third is a third party app. I could also look at the options for anyone of these, like that, and I can add a new keyboard here, so I can add different languages and different layouts and so on. So let's add Japanese here and I can choose which one and Done. Now I can see I have that one as well. Now when I'm typing on the keyboard I can tap and hold the button at the bottom left and these are the keyboards that will appear here in the order that they are shown in Settings as well. You can swipe right to left and then delete to get rid of one. Or use Edit here and then you can move them that way and that is also how you rearrange them. 
So there you go. We now have a convenient location in the Settings App where we can set the default apps for various different activities. Perhaps Apple will add more things to that list in the future.  Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 2 Responses to “How To Set Default Apps on the iPhone”

John S

2 days ago

Gary, I always want to use Lastpass for my password manager. Should I click that “on” and leave all the other choices unclicked (“off”), including the built in password app?

Gary Rosenzweig

John: Sure, if you like. Try it and see. You can always change it later.

How To Set Default Apps on the iPhone

Comments: 2 Responses to “How To Set Default Apps on the iPhone”

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