How To Change Default Apps On A Mac

admin 02.12.2020 02.12.20

How To Change Default Apps On A Mac 3,9/5 6957 votes

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MacOS already comes with some well-thought-of pre-installed apps that are designed to be used for different functions and services. These apps let you use your Mac straight out of the box. However, even though macOS’s exclusive apps are by far some of the most reliable ones to date, each of us tends to have personal preferences. For instance, you might favor using Chrome over Safari for web browsing. In this article, we’ll share with you how to change default apps in Mac to your preferred ones.

Back in the pre-Mac OS X and macOS days, Apple’s System 9 and earlier relied on hidden metadata to associate files with apps. File extensions, those bits of text that follow a period at the end.

What Are Default Mac Apps?

Changing the Default App. If you want to change the default app that opens a certain file type, you need to find a file that has the correct file type. So if you want all PNG files to open in a new app, you will need an PNG image to perform this. Locate your file and right click (Alt click) on the icon. This will bring you a menu with a.
If you want to change a default app other than your browser or email client then you can still do so. Open up Finder, navigate to the file in question and right-click it to bring up the contextual.
What you need is a more permanent way to change default apps. In what follows, we will tell you how you can set an app as the default for one or several formats. Set A Default App For A Particular Format. The painfully slow method of getting this done is to set defaults for each format one by one.

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Default apps are the programs that automatically launch when you perform an action on your Mac. For example, if you haven’t installed and set up a different browser yet, any web link you click will open on Safari, Apple’s proprietary web browser. To give you an idea, here are some of the most basic pre-installed apps you may find on your Mac:

App Store
Automator
Calculator
Calendar
Contacts
Dashboard
FaceTime
DVD Player
Game Center
iBooks
iMovie
iTunes
Launchpad
Mail
Maps
Photos
QuickTime Player
Safari
Time Machine

Some of these apps are indispensable, such as Automator and Time Machine. On the other hand, some are plainly extras that you can live without, such as Game Center and Launchpad. Meanwhile, there are those apps that are actually quite useful, but can be substituted by other apps that may do the job better. These include iBooks, QuickTime Player, Mail, Maps, and as exampled earlier, Safari. If you want to use another app in place of the default apps in Mac, you have two options: temporarily use a different app or permanently change the default app for specific functions.

Temporarily Using Another App To Perform A Task

It is straightforward and won’t require you to tinker with your Mac’s settings in any way. To try doing this, do the following steps:

Download the app you want to use. For instance, VLC Player for playing movies and other video files. If you already have it, go to the next step.
Open Finder. Look for the file you want to play. Right-click on it. On the menu, select Open With. The list of usable apps relevant to the file will appear. You will see the default app at the top of the list.
Select the alternative app you want to use. The file will now open in that app.

How To Change The Mac Default App Settings

If you think you’re going to use alternative apps for a long time, it’s better to just set them up as default apps instead of doing the method above every single time. However, keep in mind that you can’t change default app settings in one go. But, don’t worry. Switching default apps shouldn’t take long. What’s good about this is you can always change your default apps.

Changing Default Browser

Safari is the default browser for all Apple devices. If you have installed other browsers, such as Chrome, Firefox, or Opera, you probably got a message asking to make them your default browser. If you ignored that request before, you could make any of them your default browser now.

Go to System Preferences > General.
Locate Default Web Browser.
Click the drop-down menu to see the available browsers that can be set as default.
Click on your browser of choice to set it as default.

Changing Default Email App

Apple’s Mail app is pretty straightforward and easy to use. However, for some, it can be too honest that it lacks some cool features that other email apps have. To switch from Mail to another email app you’ve downloaded and installed, do these:

Open the Mail app. Go to Mail > Preferences.
Find Default Email Reader. Click it to open the list of other email clients on your mac.
Select the email app you want to use.

Changing Default Apps For Various Types Of Files

You can also change the default app or program to open certain file types, such as photos and videos. Here’s how:

Open Finder. Right-click on the file you want to open a different app.
On the menu, click Get Info.
A box will appear. Find “Open with:” Click it.
Click the drop-down menu to choose a new default app.
Click Choose All. Now, all files of that type will open on your newly set default app.

On a final note, no matter what apps you set as default, it’s essential that you keep your Mac in tip-top condition. Tweakbit MacRepair can help you with that. By taking care of your Mac’s storage space, RAM, and battery, you are sure to enjoy using your Mac better and longer.

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Whenever you download or create any given file on your Mac, it is instantly assigned a default application to open it, which you can easily identify by the file’s thumbnail in most occasions. However, double clicking on the file will open it in that application and that one alone.

If you need to open that file with another app though, you can right-click on the file, choose Open With and then choose another app from the available ones in the list.

But what if you want to have not just that one, but all other files of the same format to be opened with an application other than the default one?

Here are two different methods you can use to achieve this:

Setting Default File Associations

Method 1

Step 1: Right-click on the file and select Other… from the available options. A dialog box will appear showing you all the applications that might be able to open the file.

Step 2: Select one application from among the list and make sure to check the Always Open With checkbox. Once you do, click Open. The file will open in the application you chose and from then onwards, all files of that type will have that application set as their default.

Tip: If the application you want is greyed out, select All Applications from the Enable: drop down menu.

Method 2

Step 1: Right-click on the file and select Get Info to bring up the file’s information panel. Alternatively, you can just press the keyboard shortcutCommand + I.

Step 2: On that panel, look for the Open with: section and select another application from the drop down menu. Once you do, click the Change All… button below for all files of that type to open with your selected application from then onwards.

Also note that if no other application is available on the list, you can still choose Other… to bring up the same dialog box mentioned previously and follow from there.

Removing Default File Associations

There might be times when a file is associated with the wrong application or you simply want a certain kind of file not to be associated with any particular application, like when you want to manually choose the app to open them for example.

To do this in just a few clicks, you need to download a small, simple Preference Pane Extension called RCDefaultApp. Head to this website to download it. Once you do, install it.

Once you install it and open it, go to the Extensions tab and scroll across all the available file types there until you find the one that you want to make “neutral”. Once you find it, you will see the app set for it as the default one to open those types of files. Click on that same drop down menu to reveal its options and select disable.

Once you are done, all the files of the type you chose will be “neutral” and ready for you to assign them to an application or to open them with any app you choose.

That’s it for this entry. Hope you find these tips useful! Cropping photo app mac.

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